Johnson's success literally built on strong foundation

HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- They needed a new building. The No. 24 team of driver Jeff Gordon was on the verge of winning its fourth championship in NASCAR's premier series, and in the process had outgrown its current facility at the Hendrick Motorsports complex. Make this one big, executives urged team owner Rick Hendrick. And he did, signing off on the design for an 85,000-square-foot steel and glass edifice that would look at home at the headquarters of Microsoft.

Gordon saw the blueprints. He saw this up-and-coming driver named Jimmie Johnson whom he wanted to bring into the Hendrick fold. He saw how Joe Gibbs Racing had become the best team in NASCAR by merging the operations of its two cars. And he realized that if the Hendrick team wanted to continue to win championships in the future, the new building couldn't house just one team. It had to house one team fielding two cars.

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"I was sold on it, because we were basically trying to win the championship in 2001, and I felt like if we didn't move forward and ahead, we might not be battling for championships in the future," Gordon said Friday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, site of Sunday's final Nextel Cup event. "We needed to do something to take ourselves to the next level, and I thought having another team there would be beneficial to us."

And thus began the process that spawned a juggernaut. The construction of a new building led to discussions of adding a fourth team, which led to the hiring of Johnson, which led to the merging of Hendrick's 24 and 48 shops, which led to 33 wins and 13 poles and $51 million and now an almost inevitable second consecutive Nextel Cup championship. Johnson, 86 points ahead of Gordon, is on the brink of the 2007 title because he's savvy and smooth and talented and has a crew chief as wily as any out there. But it all happened for the most mundane and ordinary of reasons -- the race team that hired him needed more space.

No sensible person would argue that Johnson, a championship off-road racer and a title threat from almost the moment he landed in NASCAR's top series, hasn't worked hard for everything he's accomplished. He was smart enough as a young driver to make contacts with team owners, look sharp for potential sponsors and Chevrolet brass, and craft a business proposal that helped him get his big break. He was good enough to back it all up with performance. But his ascension was also impeccably timed, occurring just as Hendrick unveiled plans for a new facility that would house not just another race team, but one that would work in tandem with a No. 24 crew that had established itself as the best in the sport.

If Hendrick had decided the DuPont team's current building was adequate enough, Johnson might very well be racing elsewhere today -- and without the overwhelming success he's enjoyed the last two seasons. Had Hendrick decided to follow the sport's status quo and add another team but make it a separate entity in a separate wing, Johnson might well be just another young, promising driver trying to find his way in this sport.

"I can tell you this, [the No. 48 team] wouldn't have gotten where they did as fast as they did," Gordon said. "I'm not saying they wouldn't have gotten there. But not the way they came out of the box. I mean, we won a championship. We basically took championship cars and material and turned it over. That got them close, and then they had to do the rest. It was big part of it."

Brian Whitesell, the Hendrick team manager who was the point man in the 24/48 merger, agreed. "It definitely helped the curve," said Whitesell, who now oversees the combined 5/25 shop that will become the 5/88 with Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s addition next year. "It got them going faster. Today, it's definitely a factor, as you see them so close in competition now."

Same but different

They share information, yet Jeff Gordon and the No. 24 team just can't catch Jimmie Johnson and it's because the two have completely different styles behind the wheel.

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It all looks so seamless today, and it is. Whitesell didn't want the cars segregated, with 24s on one side of the shop floor and 48s on the other. Cars for both teams are assembled in the same room in Harrisburg, N.C., randomly intermingled with one another. Parts are pulled from the same bins. They receive common engines and common chassis, and have their bodies hung by the same people. Crew chiefs work in adjacent offices. Mechanics and fabricators wear work shirts with a 48 on one side, and a 24 on the other.

"You can't separate these guys out. You really have to treat it as one team," Gordon said. "You have two road crews, two crew chiefs, and two drivers. That was the philosophy that we determined would make it work."

Naturally, there was some resistance at first. Yes, the Gibbs team that had pioneered the concept used it to win a championship with Bobby Labonte, and would go on to win two more with Tony Stewart. But the 24 guys were 24 guys. They worked for a driver who was the Hendrick organization's clear leader. And now they were supposed to share?

"At the time, we were a little selfish," admits Whitesell, a former member of Gordon's team who served as interim crew chief after Ray Evernham left.

"It was a little difficult, because at that time, it was all about Jeff Gordon," he added. "People were hesitant. It's like, 'Who's this new guy? How's this going to work? Is this going to distract from the 24?' So there was some resistance. There are a lot of those guys who are still there, and I'm sure they have a different story today than they did back then."

Today Johnson is the most dominant driver in NASCAR, a butt-kicking machine who leaves other competitors almost in awe. He and his No. 48 team have won four consecutive races, are about to win two consecutive championships, and will enter the 2008 season as the clear favorites to do it all again. And it might never have happened had crewmen on the No. 24 team not needed a little more elbow room, had Gordon not had a vision for the future, and had Hendrick not laid out a plan designed to keep up with his competitors, which instead led him to surpass them.

"I don't think it would have happened," Gordon said, when asked if Johnson's team would be in this position had the new facility never been realized. "Not to take anything away from Jimmie, but Jimmie wasn't spectacular. I mean, I remember you guys [in the media] saying, 'Jimmie Johnson, why would they hire Jimmie Johnson?' He wasn't a guy who set the world on fire in the Busch Series. But I just saw something in him, and I thought, you put him in the kind of equipment I'm in, and he'll do very well. And he did."