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MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — Jimmie Johnson was the first to arrive and the second to be introduced and no, he wasn’t wearing a cape.
He’s a six-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion, but he’s filled his trophy case without the aid of superpowers. As far as we know.
Sunday, down the road at Homestead-Miami Speedway, he’ll try to do something only two other drivers have accomplished. NASCAR has two seven-time premier series champions, Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt. Win seven titles and you’re an icon. Johnson would like to be No. 3.
Of course, to accomplish that he’ll have to beat three other drivers — Joey Logano, Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch. It’s the Championship 4 round of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup and Sunday’s Ford EcoBoost 400 will either be 267 laps of heartache or jubilation for three of the four.
Thursday at the Loews Miami Beach, the four were making nice, sitting side by side, wearing smiles and fire suits. Unlike past years with a decidedly different mix of competitors, there was no animosity on display or simmering just beneath the surface.
“I don’t know how the guys feel, but I don’t think anything I’m going to say to these guys is going to make their car any slower on Sunday,” Edwards said, “so there’s really no point. I know it’s entertaining for you guys, but …”
Instead, we got guys talking about how they “embrace the pressure” and today’s today but this weekend when the helmets go on …
Maybe then it will be fire and brimstone, but Thursday it was more like milk and cookies.
“We’re all out there as competitors, but right now we’re outside the car,” Logano, driver of the No. 22 Ford for Team Penske, said. “We’ve got to spend a lot of time together this week.”
Busch, who can be the most caustic of the bunch — and God love him for it — described his fellow finalists as “easy to get along with, easy to talk to, easy to have a good time and joke around and mess around, so it’s been good.”
We don’t have to wonder if it will change Sunday. It will. Competition brings out the best, and sometimes the worst, and there’s no stage bigger in NASCAR than a season-ending race with the championship on the line.
Tempers will flare and nerves will fray and that’s as inevitable as the sunset.
Johnson, driver of the No. 48 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports, is making his first appearance in the finals under the elimination-style format for the Chase; previous titles were won by simply grinding the competition into the ground, then coasting to Homestead with “only needs to finish (fill in the blank) or better to clinch the title.”
Busch still jokingly refers to himself as a “part-time champion,” having won last year’s title with Joe Gibbs Racing after missing the first 11 races of the season due to injury.
Edwards, also out of the JGR camp, can’t avoid 2011 and losing the title on a tiebreaker – a replay of the final race of the season was the first thing he said he saw on TV recently while in New York City.
Logano, meanwhile, recalls his first final-round appearance in 2014, and how he says he “made a lot of mistakes that weekend,” inside the car as well as out.
They don’t have to dislike one another; each has his own baggage with which to deal.
The lack of contempt is the result of the four drivers involved according to Johnson.
“If you think of (past) years and people having issues with one another, there’s really nothing lingering,” he said. “Not to say there won’t be by the end of Sunday night. It doesn’t surprise me with the group of four that’s there. If you change a couple of people out it could have definitely been different.
“But this group, I can’t recall anybody really having an issue with one another.”
We sought mind games, subtle jabs and perhaps a sneer or two. What we got instead was a gathering of Phi Kappa NASCAR.
Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick never seemed so far away.