NASCAR ALL-TIME CUP RACE WINNERS
Richard Petty, 200
David Pearson, 105
Jeff Gordon, 93
Bobby Allison, 84
Darrell Waltrip, 84
Cale Yarborough, 83
Dale Earnhardt, 76
Jimmie Johnson, 75
(Other active drivers)
Tony Stewart, 48
Matt Kenseth, 36
Kyle Busch, 34
Kevin Harvick, 31
Denny Hamlin, 27
Kurt Busch, 27
Dale Earnhardt Jr., 26
It’s going to happen. Jimmie Johnson in his 40th year of life will not suddenly forget the way to Victory Lane. He first will claim the race that puts him front quarter panel-to-front quarter panel with the great ghost of his sport. And then, inevitably, he’ll pull clear.
One more win atop his total of 75 and Johnson ties the career total of the late Dale Earnhardt (who ranks seventh on the all-time NASCAR Sprint Cup win list, but No. 1 with a very dedicated generation of fans).
What more appropriate time and place for that to happen than Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway? The spirit of Earnhardt is strong here — no one has more than his nine victories at AMS. And it is a place that has fit Johnson like a racing suit — he arrives as the defending Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 champion, with four career wins in Atlanta and 24 wins on mile-and-a-half tracks (most among active drivers).
“I’ve always had great success here. It’s been a lot of fun,” Johnson said Friday. Johnson qualified 19th for Sunday’s field, although starting position hasn’t exactly defined his race day — he won from the rear last year.
“I think this track with the high tire wear and the bumpy conditions and the fact that you have to search around for lines really suits my style, and suits my upbringing racing on the dirt. It has been a great race track for me,” he said.
Johnson has arrived at that stage of a singularly successful career where there’s a milestone around every turn.
Catching Earnhardt’s win total is but a matter of time, and when it does happen, it is bound to hold great sentimental significance for long-term race fans, given Earnhardt’s colorful, rough-hewn career and his shocking death at Daytona in 2001.
Matching Earnhardt’s and Richard Petty’s total of seven series titles is a bit of a trickier proposition. Johnson has been stuck on six since 2013, which coincidentally is the time NASCAR modified its championship chase into more a knock-out, playoff-type format.
Earnhardt and Petty. That’s an all-time twosome of stock-car racing. Nobody joins that select group without legendary credentials.
“As a competitor I’ve thought about how cool it would be to join those guys,” Johnson said earlier this year. “It’s no easy feat, and I think the last few years have shown that. If that day does come, it would mean a lot to me, it would be very special.
Last season certainly showed the fickle nature of the modern championship chase. Five race victories weren’t enough to guarantee Johnson anything more than a spot in the first round of the championship chase eliminations. Once there, all it took to sabotage Johnson was a $5 part, when a broken rear axle took him out at Dover and eliminated him from the Chase.
As another new season presents itself for the taking, Johnson and the higher-ups on his team say that the hunger to win more is gnawing. Jeff Gordon has driven off into the comfort of the television booth. Tony Stewart is limping out of the arena. Next up among the old guard of champions is Johnson, but retirement talk is not allowed in his garage.
And his car owner sounds reasonably bullish on the future. “More than anybody, but I’d like to see one of our drivers break that (series championship) record, and Jimmie’s the guy that can do it. He’s got six and he’s got a lot more in him. The format’s a lot tougher than it used to be, so it’s harder to win that many, but we’ll see,” Rick Hendrick said.
Earnhardt was two months shy of 50 when he died at Daytona. He ran 676 races, 168 more than Johnson has to date. But who wants to keep tempting fate that long these days (both Gordon and Stewart are 44)?
Johnson never had the chance to run head-to-head against Earnhardt. But he did get to meet “The Intimidator” a couple of times, and as Johnson has told it in the past, “he did a fantastic job of intimidating and scaring the you-know-what out of me in both those instances.”
When he does pass Earnhardt on the race-win chart, whether it’s in Atlanta or down the road, Johnson has promised to use the occasion to pay tribute to the late champion. An important gesture to those who still take their No. 3 seriously.
When Gordon tied Earnhardt in Phoenix in 2007, he ran a cool-down lap while displaying a black No. 3 flag.
The next week in Talladega when Gordon won and passed Earnhardt at another track where The Intimidator ruled, thousands of fans threw cans and paper onto the track to mark their disapproval. They let go grudgingly.
The possible reaction in Atlanta, should Johnson pull even with Earnhardt? You’d like to think that the beer would be for drinking and the toilet paper would be for more essential uses rather than tools of protest.
“If it were to happen seven or eight years ago, it might be different,” AMS president Ed Clark said. “I think people would just appreciate (Johnson’s) career.”
Hey, it’s a big track. There is room for everyone’s legacy.
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