Jimmie Johnson doesn’t need to win this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway to advance to the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship 4.
But that doesn’t mean the six-time premier series champion won’t be among those favored when the AAA Texas 500 gets underway Sunday (2 p.m. ET, NBC, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR).
Johnson’s record of late at the 1.5-mile track has been amazing, with five victories in the last eight races.
He’s won more often at Martinsville, as often at Auto Club and has a better average finish at Phoenix. But it would be hard to argue with his Texas results.
A big part of the reason for his success there, he said Wednesday, has to do with the aging of the track’s surface. And, strangely enough, past experiences on dirt.
“The last three or four years, the track’s just been great to us,” he said. “I feel like the older surfaces do that. When you think back to the old Charlotte, you look at our success at Atlanta, the old Darlington. Texas has moved into that category, the character in the track.
“My dirt background, the way we set my race cars up, are just better on rough, low-grip race tracks.”
Johnson hasn’t been on dirt in more than a dozen years, coming to NASCAR after competing in off-road desert and stadium trucks in various series. Initially, the driving styles between the two didn’t transfer.
“It hurt me for the longest damn time, it really did,” he said. “Because being sideways was just part of the gig; I didn’t realize how slow it really was in a stock car.
“But there is a sweet spot where the car is leading with the back … largely because the fuel is hanging past the rear axle. So the longer we run, the more fuel we burn, the less the car turns. So you have to start the car looser to be good on the long runs. … it’s a little uncomfortable but as the run goes on, it drives a lot better.
“Once I figured out how to make my dirt background work for me, that’s where it has come into play.”
A victory at Martinsville guaranteed his presence in this year’s Championship 4 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The other three drivers are TBD. Seven drivers, three spots and two races at Texas and Phoenix equals a lot of potential heartache.
Johnson, 41, knows the feeling of being one of the odd drivers out — this year marks his first trip to the title round under the elimination-style format.
“Last year hurt pretty bad because we had a great start to those first two (Chase) races and then, looking at the way things unfolded with our win at Texas, we were like ‘We could have been in the final four. We could have been there,'” he said. “So that one hurt for sure.”
There will be no lingering ill will between Johnson and Denny Hamlin heading into this weekend’s race — Johnson said the two “had a chat Monday” to iron out any differences.
RELATED: Johnson, Hamlin explain hard racing at Martinsville
The two were battling for position in the top 10 at Martinsville on Sunday when there was contact.
Hamlin wasn’t pleased with how hard Johnson was pressing at such an early juncture in the race. Johnson said he was only trying to keep from losing multiple positions.
Johnson “thinks he’s a (expletive) king; he doesn’t do anything wrong,” Hamlin told his team on the radio before the contact.
RELATED: Hear Hamlin’s in-car audio from Martinsville
“There’s always two sides to every situation,” Johnson said Wednesday. “I just didn’t want to fall back to 14th again. I’m in the outside lane, digging along. … Evidently there was a gap behind Denny and a pretty big gap behind the 2 car (of Brad Keselowski). So his frustration was ‘Why are you racing me so hard at this point in time?'”
Their differences have been put to rest, but that didn’t stop either from having a little fun at the other’s expense the following day.
RELATED: Crown Hamlin as the king of Halloween
Hamlin retweeted a photo of Johnson wearing a crown as part of a Halloween costume on Monday, saying “Yea, I knew you wore a damn crown to bed.”
Johnson soon followed with a shot of Hamlin dressed as a Dalmatian, tweeting “Yea I knew you wore damn floppy ears to bed.”
“Bad timing on my part,” Johnson said of his own photograph, which included his wife, Chandra, and daughters, Lydia and Genevieve.
“Hamlin was primed and ready to take advantage of it.”