'Six-time' reflects on last season's No. 48 performance, looks to 2015
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For purely selfish reasons, Jimmie Johnson didn't exactly see eye-to-eye with the new system for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. The self-interest is understandable, after he advanced through just one round of eliminations last season, the debut year for the new-look Chase.
"I would be foolish to like any other format than the one in which I've won six championships, to be honest," Johnson said with a laugh. "Call a spade a spade."
The bitter taste from an 11th-place finish in the final Sprint Cup Series standings -- the worst result of Johnson's 13-year career -- has galvanized the Hendrick Motorsports No. 48 team as it aims for its second chance at propelling Johnson to a record-tying seventh crown in NASCAR's premier division. Though the new Chase format didn't directly benefit him right out of the gate, Johnson said he was able to see and the count the blessings in a big-picture view.
"I entered this new phase of the playoff system thinking, I want full grandstands, I want sponsorship revenue where it was in the '90s, I want our sport to thrive and be strong," Johnson said. "You know, the world is changing. … I've seen stats recently that show this format boosted ratings, boosted attendance -- a lot of hype, a lot of excitement. I'm putting on my 'what's best for the sport' hat, and if this is better for the sport, I'm in. I want this sport to succeed."
Success for Johnson seemed to come with ease during his run of five straight championships from 2006-2010, a stretch during which NASCAR made only minor alterations to its postseason format. The larger Chase overhaul came after the 2013 season, shortly after Johnson hoisted the Sprint Cup trophy for a sixth time.
Johnson said the timing of those two events was purely coincidental, with the former not a direct result of the latter in an effort to "Jimmie-proof" the Chase. Although the format wound up crowning Kevin Harvick's No. 4 team -- a Hendrick Motorsports affiliate with Stewart-Haas Racing -- at season's end, Johnson said his initial analysis of the new system before its rollout was favorable.
"At first blush when I was told about this in fall of '13, going into the '14 season, I thought, 'man, this is going to fit the 48 great,' " Johnson said. "I don't think we did our job as a team last year, and I think that's where we got beat is not by equipment -- the 4 car won the championship with all the same equipment -- it was what we did as a team. We weren't the team we needed to be. I don't think it's an attempt to 'Jimmie-proof' it. I think it is harder -- when you look at Kevin, he needed the last two races to be the champion. I think that speaks to it."
It's tricky to characterize a season with a quartet of Victory Lane celebrations as a down year, but the charmed life and trademark bulletproof performance normally associated with Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus were somehow missing from the 2014 portfolio.
"Even though he won four races and we kind of got in stride, it was not a Jimmie Johnson/Chad Knaus kind of year," team owner Rick Hendrick said. "Once you start having that bad luck and you wreck and you break, sometimes it just snowballs. You know what I thought about as we were going through all the years that we had no bad breaks and we won five back-to-back, hey, be thankful that you didn't have crashes and somebody running into you. But it was just one of those years, and I think it makes us hungrier this year."
Even with the perception of an increased desire for winning, the business of the sport still lingers with talk of potential contract extensions for Johnson and Knaus, something Hendrick says will have a resolution soon.
"We're already into that," Hendrick said, "and there'll be some announcements here pretty quick."
In the meantime, the No. 48 bunch sits in another unfamiliar offseason place -- soul-searching. Johnson said the new Chase format makes reaching stock-car racing's pinnacle a more rigorous accomplishment, but conceded that his team needed more consistency to be in that mix last season.
Finding that commodity has been the focus of offseason assignments for Knaus and Co.
"We took a lot of time and reflected on where we had some breakdowns throughout the year -- some being internal, some being external," Knaus said. "There were a lot things that maybe influenced and impacted how we were running, so we think we've got a lot of that stuff cleared up. We've got some new engineers and have the guys refocused, so I think we're in a good spot."