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The greatest NASCAR driver of all time is … Jimmie Johnson?
That’s the word on the street, or in this case the voice on the radio, and since the bluegrass channel was on a commercial break I decided to stick around long enough to hear how that particular conclusion was reached.
Such comparisons are inevitable – it’s the sort of thing that arises when one is chasing legends. No different than when Jeff Gordon was piling up victories and championships in pursuit of Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt. No different than when Earnhardt was piling up victories and championships in pursuit of Petty. And no different than when Petty began piling up wins and titles on his way to overtaking a host of former champions, including his father, Lee, the first to win three NASCAR premier series championships.
What the 39-year-old Johnson has managed to accomplish in little more than 13 full seasons in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series certainly puts him in the same league with Petty and Earnhardt, NASCAR’s only seven-time champions.
There’s no doubt that Johnson, fit and trim and now only two wins away from matching Earnhardt’s career win total of 76 victories, is one of the sport’s greatest drivers.
But is he No. 1?
From a numbers standpoint, the Hendrick Motorsports driver will undoubtedly surpass Earnhardt’s win total, and it’s likely he’ll eventually capture a seventh championship. He could, in fact, become the first driver to win more than seven titles.
That would make him the most successful driver from a championship standpoint (neither he nor anyone else will come close to Petty’s mark of 200 career wins), but will that make him NASCAR’s greatest driver?
No.
That designation, without question, belongs to Earnhardt.
Statistics are a great way to gauge success. But it takes more than numbers to measure greatness.
Johnson has managed to excel during what some claim is the most competitive era in the history of NASCAR. Yes, there are more winners, on average, today. But there are also more races on the schedule, thus also more opportunities.
A larger number of teams run the full schedule today, although that doesn’t necessarily mean there are more “better” teams competing.
Earnhardt never ran a season consisting of 36 points races; Johnson’s never run in fewer than 36.
Earnhardt never had the opportunity to compete at Kansas, Chicago or Kentucky; but by the same token, Johnson never raced at North Wilkesboro or Riverside. I have a strong feeling both could have won at those tracks given the chance.
I’ll argue that the talent pool Earnhardt often faced was just as deep – with lineups including drivers such as Petty and Darrell Waltrip, Bobby Allison, Cale Yarborough, Buddy Baker, Neil Bonnett, Geoff Bodine and Harry Gant. Eventually Bill Elliott, Dale Jarrett and Rusty Wallace, Davey Allison, Alan Kulwicki, Tim Richmond and others took their place. Most were champions; many are already members of the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
Johnson is one of the greatest drivers that today’s fans will ever see. What he has done has been nothing short of amazing. If one wants to argue that he would not have won 74 races and six championships had it not been for Hendrick Motorsports and Chad Knaus, the same could be said of Earnhardt, who owed much of his success to Richard Childress Racing and the talented group he worked with there.
But what elevates Earnhardt above the rest is more than the fact that he was so successful. He provided fans with some of the sport’s most memorable moments during his two-plus decades. Among them: winning the pole at Watkins Glen in ’96 (and setting the track qualifying record, to boot) just two weeks after suffering a broken collarbone and sternum in a vicious crash at Talladega; climbing from his damaged car and into the ambulance, only to quickly exit and return to his car once he realized it would still run, at Daytona in ’97; his first and only Daytona 500 victory the following season, a win that erased 19 years of heartbreak.
There was the “rattle his cage” incident with Terry Labonte en route to victory in the night race at Bristol in ’99; the wrongly-termed but aptly promoted “pass in the grass” on his way to winning the 1997 All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway; and the charge from 18th to first in the final five laps of the 2000 Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.
For two decades, greatness drove a Chevrolet and it carried the number 3.
They were memorable moments that elevated the sport and defined the man.
Johnson can win more races and win more championships, but he can’t match that. He needn’t worry – no one else can, either.