It was one of those seasons where anything that could go wrong did. He struggled to get a handle on the car because his team had changed manufacturers. He suffered a concussion in a crash in the Daytona 500, and doesn't remember much about the next two races at Richmond and Rockingham. He failed to complete four of the first eight events, either because of accidents or engine trouble. He fell so far behind in the standings that even a spectacular second half couldn't make up all the ground. When it ended, Darrell Waltrip had finished a mere 47 points behind Bobby Allison -- and his shot at that most elusive of NASCAR quarries, three consecutive championships, was gone.

“

Great drivers, Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon, you name it, anyone that's won championships, if it was easy, there would be a bunch of us sitting here with three or four in a row.

”

DARRELL WALTRIP

"We had all kinds of things we just couldn't overcome," Waltrip, now a FOX television analyst, said of his 1983 season. "We won some races and were competitive, but it took us a good part of the year to get there."

With a 106-point lead in the Sprint Cup standings and just two events remaining on the 2008 schedule, Jimmie Johnson is closing in on something that only one other driver in the long history of NASCAR's premier series has done -- win three championships in a row. Cale Yarborough is currently the only man to have accomplished the feat, winning titles in Junior Johnson-built cars from 1976-78. But before Jimmie Johnson, a handful of other modern-era drivers, all of them legends, attempted to reach that threshold. Two came within a single race of getting there. None of them made it, leaving the record to Yarborough alone, and leaving Johnson on the verge of joining the sport's most exclusive club.

"It's an extraordinary accomplishment," said Jeff Gordon, Johnson's teammate at Hendrick Motorsports. "Whether you're looking at the old points system or the new points system, it's incredible. I have issues with comparing history in our sport with the old format, but at the same time I think what Jimmie and that whole 48 team have done is setting the bar so high. They might be able to win three, four, who knows how many this team can win. It's going to be very interesting and exciting to watch."

Gordon would know. After winning titles in 1997 and 1998, he made his own unsuccessful bid for a three-peat in 1999. Waltrip tried and failed in 1983. Richard Petty, the most successful driver ever to slip inside a stock car, had two shots at it, coming up empty in both 1973 and 1976. Like Petty, the late Dale Earnhardt won seven titles, but never three consecutively. He made three attempts, in 1988, 1992 and 1995, but fell short -- just barely in that last effort, where the final tally showed him 34 points behind.

"It's hard enough to repeat," Petty said. "And then when you come back and do it three times, you've got to have all the stars lined up all the way through everything."

Those stars appear to be lining up for Johnson, who needs to average a seventh-place finish over the final two events, Sunday at Phoenix and next weekend at Homestead-Miami, to hold off Carl Edwards for a third consecutive championship. Of all the other drivers who have chased the mark now held by Yarborough, none of them were in this commanding a position, with the lead at this point in the season. Most were playing catch-up, trying desperately to crawl out of deficits, or out of the running altogether. Of course, there were two instances where it nearly happened, and Cale almost had some company at the top.

Before Johnson, it was Earnhardt -- who else -- who came the closest. With five races remaining he trailed Gordon by 275 points, but a furious rally trimmed the margin to 147 at the season finale in Atlanta. Still, he needed a miracle. Gordon, so young then he was called "the Kid," could clinch by finishing 41st or better. His Hendrick team entered an extra car, driven by Jeff Purvis, that was to pull off the racetrack should Gordon report any signs of trouble.

Dale Earnhardt won it in 1993 and '94, but lost the '95 title by 34 points.

Earnhardt did all that he could do, leading a race-best 268 laps and winning the event. Gordon, struggling with a poor-handling car, finished 14 laps down in 32nd place, enough for the then-third-year driver to secure his first Cup title. The final margin was 34 points, but Earnhardt took no pleasure in coming close. "You know how I feel about second place," he told reporters after the event.

It was Earnhardt's third, and ultimately last, attempt at the three-peat. In 1988 his Richard Childress Racing team struggled to adapt to a Chevrolet body change, and he finished third, 232 points behind an unstoppable Bill Elliott. "It wasn't any excuse, we just didn't have that great of a year," Childress, Earnhardt's former car owner, says now. "Seems like we got penalized for everything we did. I remember sitting on pit road for five laps for rough driving."

In 1992 Earnhardt was plagued by several engine failures and finished 12th, a distant 574 points behind Alan Kulwicki. People began to whisper that the Intimidator was finished. Of course, he'd prove them incorrect soon enough, but three consecutive championships always eluded him.

"It was one of those deals where, once you're winning and winning championships, you want to keep on winning and winning championships," Childress said. "The third one just seemed to always slip away from us. It just seemed like we never could put three years in a row together. But Jimmie, they've got a good, solid team. In today's time and era and cars and everything, not taking anything away from anybody else, they've done a phenomenal job coming out and winning that much."

Waltrip also came close. He had won championships in 1981 and 1982, but before the 1983 season car owner Junior Johnson switched manufacturers from Buick to Chevrolet. It was the first in a series of hurdles Waltrip would face in his quest to win three in a row.

"Junior Johnson was one of those kinds of car owners, he got tired of doing the same thing over and over and over again," Waltrip said. "So he wanted to change manufacturers. We had been with Buick, so we switched to Chevrolet. That Monte Carlo was so different from the Buick, it really threw us a curve."

So did a crash in the Daytona 500 that forced him to be held overnight in an area hospital with a concussion. So did several mechanical failures early in the season. After a 20th-place finish in the summer Daytona race, Waltrip was 212 points behind Allison. But Junior Johnson's teams always hit their stride in the second half of any season -- "The Chase would be absolutely perfect for him," Waltrip said -- and the driver called D.W. finished no worse than ninth over the final 14 events of the year. He came to the season finale at Riverside 64 points behind Allison, who drove a cautious race on the old road course and finished ninth to win the title by 47. For Waltrip, who had won the pole, led a race-best 34 laps, and finished sixth, it had been a very personal quest.

Bobby Allison won the 1983 championship by 47 points over Darrell Waltrip.

"I had a lot of pressure on me, because Cale had won three in a row driving for Junior," he said. "I wanted to prove to Junior that I was equal to Cale. As a matter of fact, when I first started driving for Junior, when I might not have been running as hard as he wanted me to, or to fire me up a little bit, he would call me Cale over the radio. And it would really make me mad. I wanted to prove something to Junior, and to a lot of people as well. It seemed like I was always having to prove myself, mainly because I was always telling people how good I was. I had to back that up. So I had a lot of pressure on me in '83 to win three in a row, and in all honesty, I thought we would. But we made too many changes."

Without those changes? "We'd have won the third one," he said. "I'm almost positive."

Even the King found winning three in a row to be difficult. Petty tried for the first time in 1973, before Yarborough had even set the standard, but was doomed by a litany of mechanical demons. Engine trouble at Riverside, Rockingham, Atlanta and Martinsville. Ignition trouble at Bristol. Crashes at Darlington and Talladega. The two-time defending champion was all but out of it 10 races into the season. He finished fifth in points, 295 behind Benny Parsons.

"No matter what we done that year, it was bad," Petty recalled. "We won three or four races or something, but we never really could string anything together. That's just fate. That's the way it is."

Petty made another run at the three-peat in 1975, but finished second, 195 points behind Yarborough -- the first step in Cale's history-making trifecta. Looking back, to an age where the series championship was only beginning to emerge as a lucrative, year-end accomplishment, it didn't seem like that big of a deal.

"We didn't have the race for the Chase, or whatever they called it," Petty said. "We just ran I think 32 races at that time. You ran all the way through the season and took what was left when it was over with. I don't really know that until [former title sponsor R.J. Reynolds] got involved in the early '70s that the championship was a big deal. It really didn't mean that much, you know what I mean? It was among the people you ran against, but as far as the general public out there, they didn't pay it much attention. Then they got to doing the Winston Cup championship, and every year it's gotten a little bit bigger."

“

The thing I do remember about '99 was, we had fast cars, but we were a little inconsistent.

”

JEFF GORDON

It was huge by 1999, when Gordon made the most recent attempt at equaling Yarborough's mark. He was up against a juggernaut, a Dale Jarrett squad that was hitting its stride with Robert Yates Racing, and would go on to blow away the field. Gordon finished sixth, a hefty 642 points behind. But Jarrett wasn't the only issue; that 1999 campaign was when the first, contentious cracks began to appear in the relationship between Gordon and his ace crew chief, Ray Evernham. Before the season was over, Evernham would leave Hendrick to form his own race team and spearhead Dodge's return to NASCAR's premier series.

"The thing I do remember about '99 was, we had fast cars, but we were a little inconsistent," Gordon said. "To me it was a time when Ray and I started to butt heads a little bit. I felt like I knew more about what I wanted, and I think he continued to want to operate the team as he had for all those years. I wish we could have gotten through that time, because I think we could have gone on to have some more championships. But we're still friends today, and still from 1993 to '98 -- and '99 wasn't all that bad -- was still a pretty amazing time."

As is this one, given that Johnson is on the brink of matching a record some thought unmatchable, due to the current competitive environment in NASCAR. He's not there yet -- Edwards will surely have his voice in the outcome -- but his place alongside Yarborough in the history books becomes a little clearer with every passing week.

"It's got to be big, because it's only been done one time, and that was 30 years ago," Waltrip said. "That tells you it's very difficult to do. Great drivers, Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon, you name it, anyone that's won championships, if it was easy, there would be a bunch of us sitting here with three or four in a row. Just keeping that intensity and keeping that desire, and not getting to the point of saying, 'Well, we've won a couple, it ain't no big deal.' [Crew chief] Chad Knaus is the engine that drives that whole train. He's got that fire in his belly, and he never lets it go out. That's huge."

So is the prospect of something never before achieved in NASCAR -- winning four consecutive championships, which Johnson would have a chance at should he take care of business over these two weeks. "It would be big, particularly when you think about NASCAR and always trying to keep the playing field level, and creating the Chase to make it difficult for anyone to run away with or to repeat," Waltrip said. "NASCAR has done everything they can to keep him from doing what he's doing."

Petty, as usual, succinctly sums it all up. How important is three in a row? "He'll just tie somebody," the King said. "The next feat would be to go win that fourth one. Then he puts himself apart."