Conversation: Jimmie Johnson

CONCORD, N.C. -- Jimmie Johnson burst on the Winston Cup scene with a flourish in 2002, achieving feats few rookie drivers before him had ever so much as fathomed. Once again, the world was reminded of Jeff Gordon's genius.

Johnson's three victories -- including a Dover sweep -- and run at a championship lifted him from relative obscurity to bona fide superstardom in less than 10 months.

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Now, he stands front-and-center as a posterboy for NASCAR's future.

Last Saturday afternoon following Happy Hour practice for the Coca-Cola 600 -- a race Team Lowe's went on to win the following evening -- Johnson hung out with NASCAR.com Senior Writer Marty Smith to talk popularity, patience, fanatics and fashion.

First things first, what are you going to spend that million on?

Johnson: Paying Uncle Sam, I guess (laughing). He's getting the biggest portion of it. I don't know, really. The way everything works out I won't see it for quite a while.

I'm working hard to make sure that if I'm injured or whatever comes down the road -- my kids, my family that I'll start someday -- I want to make sure that I'm squared away for that. So that's what my thing is right now, trying to be smart, invest and save.

Much was made of your winning pass of the boss man in The Winston, but I'd imagine neither of you could wipe the smiles from your faces during that entire exchange.

	Credit: Autostock

I would imagine I probably had the bigger grin, since he was the one getting passed (laughing). If he's going to get passed, I'm sure he'd want it to be the car he owns and is a teammate, so it was a lot of fun. We haven't really had a chance to race hard for wins throughout last year.

We're going to have more of that coming up. We both run too well to not have those battles. It was so much fun. It's neat when you can race somebody that hard and that close and be confident in the other guy. Jeff's one of the few guys I'm that confident around.

With some of your late-race luck this year several people, myself included, have voiced the opinion that you're suffering from a sophomore jinx. Are we idiots?

Maybe there's some type of jinx, but I don't think it's anything self-inflicted or anything we're doing wrong as a sophomore team to instigate it. We've just had bad racing luck.

We think we've had it bad, (Tony) Stewart's been in the same boat. So it's weird how it all works out. Some years you feel like you're more competitive and feel like everything's in line, but you don't have luck on your side and it's not going to work out. Last year we walked into this with our eyes big and didn't know what to expect in the world and we had a golden year.

It's really weird, and I haven't been in the sport for that long but I've been racing a long time, and some years it's your year and other years it's not. I don't know what this year will turn out to be.

The points battle is still too close and there's still too many races left, but when I look back on it, I'm not going to look back on it and be disappointed and say, 'Well, that's because we were sophomores.' It's going be, 'Hey, we had some bad luck and we'll get 'em next year.'"

Your popularity has exploded over the past year, so I know some fans have done some crazy things. What's your wildest fan story?

	Jimmie Johnson Credit: Autostock

Awww, man. Man, my Mom goes through all my fan mail. I've been invited to prom a bunch of times, been asked to stand in as Best Man for someone at a wedding. A lot of off-the-wall stuff you wouldn't expect to see.

How have you evolved as a person over the past year? Describe the evolution of the way you must now live your life.

It's a lot more pressure-packed situation now. It's hard to find that down time just to be yourself and relax and do the things that were so simple but fun to you a couple years ago. Even if I have a day off, I'm wide open at home keeping the things I have going pointed in the right direction.

So really I've gone from a carefree guy that loved racing and now I've turned into a businessman that still loves racing. It's just a different kind of thing. I didn't go to school to learn how to be a businessman. So a lot of this stuff is trial by error. I'm learning my way through it, making mistakes, being frustrated.

Frustration leads to change. Every time I get frustrated or can't stand whatever's going on I make a change and it gets better. So I need to get better at forecasting frustration so I don't drive myself crazy in the meantime. It's a challenge, and it's something you won't learn in the Busch Series. Winston Cup does it to you.

Busch teaches you all the right things and all the innocent things about racing, which is very necessary, like hard racing and racecars and all that stuff. When you get over on this side of the fence, the business side is just so different.

You recently had your first foray into award presentation when you handed out Breakthrough Video of the Year at the CMT Flameworthy Awards. How'd that go?

That was fun. I have to say that the Country Music industry -- for as successful as the people are that I met, I couldn't believe how down-to-earth and real they all were. It was really refreshing to see that. You just think of the music industry in a certain manner -- maybe rock 'n roll's like that, I don't know.

But those country people were down-to-earth. It really surprised me, not to mention I had a great time presenting and I really look forward to doing some more of that.

Chad Knaus, your crew chief, says you're hands-down the best driver alive at Lowe's Motor Speedway. Pretty high praise, man.

Sure is (laughing). This was one of my worst tracks in the Busch Series. It's a track I've always enjoyed, but it's nice to come back and get that reward in a Winston Cup car. I think it fits my style -- you have to be loose to be fast here. Mark Martin won (the Coca-Cola 600) last year, and everybody knows how loose a car Mark likes to drive. It's just how you go fast here.

You have a really tight-knit family who have backed you throughout your entire career. Is there personal pride there, to be able to legitimize that, so to speak?

It's not necessarily that I legitimized it, I don't think. If I ended up never getting here they still would have been very proud of me and happy of what I tried to do. That's the thing with my parents, they've never been hung up on trophies or success. They just want to see you work hard and where you land is cool. It's all about working hard.

That's something that I think kept me successful from a young age riding bikes. I'd watch these parents that would force their kids to win, force them to jump the big doubles, force them to do all this stuff, and my Dad would be over there leaning up against a tree whistling at us as we went by.

If we got off the bike and we'd tried as hard as we could, he was fine. It didn't matter where we finished. That's been something I've been extremely lucky about, that my parents took that approach with us.

Did your win in The Winston carry added meaning to you because you lost your best friend at this racetrack?

Yes. To be successful at this racetrack...Every time I pull in I think, 'Okay, I lost my best friend here.' At times, even during the race, I'll be driving down the frontstretch and I'll look at the wall and think about him.

It's cool to be carrying him on the front of my racecar every week. I miss the hell out of him. Those moments, though, you reflect back on him. At the time I was so overwhelmed with what we'd just accomplished, but as the days went by it really soaked in. I heard from his dad and I heard from his brother. That's when it really starts to sink in.

What's the best lesson Jeff Gordon has taught you, either verbally or just with his actions?

Patience. Everything throughout this industry involves patience, and the more patient you can be, the better the situation will develop for you. On the racetrack, off the track, anywhere and everywhere. That's been the main thing. It might look like, initially, that other things make it work. But boil it all down, and the problems I run into revolve around patience. The more patience I instill in myself, the better off I am.

Is the Super Dave suit good luck now?

We'll find out Sunday. It didn't help us in qualifying, but then again we didn't qualify well for The Winston, either. So if we're able to win the 600 I'll wear that thing every week.