Jimmie Johnson has driven the No. 48 to seven NASCAR titles
By all accounts, Jimmie Johnson has gotten off to a terrible start in the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season. The seven-time champion has suffered finishes of 38th and 27th respectively in the Daytona 500 at the Daytona International Speedway and the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. In both of those races the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet was involved in incidents that either eliminated or significantly damaged his car.
At this early point in the season Johnson is all the way back in 35th in the MENCS standings, fully 78 points behind leader Joey Logano. He currently ranks last among all drivers who have started both events held so far and his start has been so bad that two drivers(Mark Thompson & D.J. Kennington) rank ahead of him despite having only competed in one of the two races held.
While certainly no one should ever count out this Chad Knaus-led team that has proven itself over and over again, their fight to pull themselves into championship contention is an uphill one to be sure. But of course, any team off to a poor start in modern-day NASCAR can quickly remedy their situation by winning a single race and immediately becoming playoff eligible.
However, even if Johnson and crew were to win a race, would they truly be championship contenders? Keep in mind that he was struggling to remain on the lead lap in Atlanta even before his spin and the resulting damage from a blown tire. And more, the 1.5-mile speedway in Atlanta offers a look at what type of racing can be expected throughout much of the coming season.
Being so far off on any one of those ‘cookie cutter’ tracks could be an unhappy indicator of things to come.
Earlier this week, Atlanta winner Kevin Harvick claimed that he believed a contributing factor to his team’s success in Georgia was the fact that all four of the Stewart-Haas Racing team’s cars were competitive, and thus, provided usable information for each other. The No. 4 driver’s assertion was that the No. 10 SHR machine, formerly driven by Danica Patrick and now by Aric Almirola, had not been upholding its end of the bargain for SHR in previous seasons but is now bringing something of value to the table.
Here is the Harvick quote taken from @IndyOreo on Twitter:
If it is indeed true that all of Stewart-Haas Racing benefited from a full bank of usable notes, is it not also reasonable to assume that a team could suffer from having multiple inexperienced pilots in the fold?
After years of racing among veteran drivers such as Jeff Gordon, Kasey Kahne and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., the 42-year-old Johnson now finds himself as the leader of an organization in which the average age of his three teammates is barely more than half his own age. The 83-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race winner is the only driver among those employed by Hendrick Motorsports to have ever won a Cup race.
One has to wonder how much is being added to the weekly notebooks by William Byron, Alex Bowman and Chase Elliott with their relative lack of experience. And if Harvick’s quote is to be believed, it would indeed seem as if all the parts clicking together does indeed make a difference.
For reference sake, all four Stewart-Haas teams are currently ranked in the top-10 of the NASCAR standings while the four Hendrick Motorsports teams currently sit 17th, 19th, 25th and 35th with only a small sample size to use as a baseline so far.
Granted, Johnson has one of the great crew chiefs in the sport’s history calling the shots for his team. And obviously, he is one of the sport’s most accomplished drivers. Further, these young drivers are talented and will no doubt be capable of offering more and more input as the season rolls on. But with the difference in success and failure measured in hundredths, will Johnson and his crew find themselves too far behind the curve by the time that more valuable information starts to come on line?
Who knows how many more chances Jimmie Johnson will have to win an eighth NASCAR championship and thus break himself out of a tie with Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt, Sr. And if Kevin Harvick’s comments from earlier in the week regarding the need for competitive teammates in building a complete notebook are accurate, the task at hand for the No. 48 team could be a tough one in 2018.
Richard Allen is a member of the National Motorsports Press Association
Respond to this piece on Twitter –> @RichardAllenIDR
