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He’s the No. 1 seed and has won more Chase races, 25, than any other driver.
It’s not even close.
He is the only driver that has qualified for every Chase since the format debuted in 2004.
But Jimmie Johnson and his No. 48 team are not the team to beat today. They aren’t the favorites heading into this weekend’s myAFibRisk.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway (Sunday, 3 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), the first race in this year’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.
The role of favorite, or favorites, rests with another. Joe Gibbs Racing drivers have won eight of the last 11 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races. And none of the three that weren’t claimed by JGR went to Johnson.
His last win came 13 races ago, at Dover, and 13 races is a long time in Johnson’s trophy-filled world. He also hasn’t led a single lap since the July race in Daytona.
“Every summer. Just about every summer we go through this,” Johnson said Saturday night after a very pedestrian ninth-place finish at Richmond International Raceway. “Even (before) three of the five (titles) we won in a row.”
For those who may have forgotten, Johnson did win five consecutive championships, a feat unmatched in the series. And his six titles leave him only one short of the record seven championships won by Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt.
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So while Johnson and his Hendrick Motorsports team, led by crew chief Chad Knaus, might be concerned, they don’t appear to be worried.
It’s happened before. The feelings are familiar.
“Yeah, pissed off, frustrated, wish you’d find more speed, fighting with one another,” Johnson said.
And then?
“Then we get into those tracks in the Chase and everyone starts clicking,” he added.
“I don’t know what it is, if it’s just the tracks or knowing that it’s game time or the decisions we make under pressure. I don’t know.
“There’s just something about those final 10 races that have helped us out.”
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There’s no trend in his championship seasons — he rolled into the Chase riding back-to-back wins in ’07 and ’08, but won the title in ’13 after four finishes of 28th or worse leading up to its start.
With the Chase format debuting a new look last season, in which eliminations trimmed the field by four after every three races, Johnson said lessons were learned.
“I think last year I entered the Chase thinking I had to win every race to advance,” he said. “And then Ryan (Newman) made it to the final four (without winning a race). I think that opened a lot of eyes.
“Now, it’s more ‘just go out and get every point you can; you don’t have to hit walk-off home runs in every race.’
“I feel like I took myself out of two races early in the Chase last year doing that. So we’re going to try to be smarter.”
Sprint Cup Series teams will be visiting eight of the 10 Chase tracks for a second time this season. Three of Johnson’s four wins this year came on those tracks — Texas, Kansas and Dover.
“I think that we can get to the final four, and then Homestead is a challenge in its own,” he said. “But the first goal is to get in that final four.”
