Jimmie Johnson is starting to be more monarch than champion. The Sprint Cup championship seems to be his by divine right, even though it’s actually determined by points.
Five in a row? Richard Petty never did that. Dale Earnhardt never did that.
Nobody, at least nobody in NASCAR, ever did that.
What in the name of John Force (the drag racer who did that) do Johnson, and crew chief Chad Knaus, and owner Rick Hendrick, and Jeff Gordon’s pit crew, think they are doing?
This sport is supposed to be competitive. That’s what NASCAR said when they implemented a Chase, and a generic car, and double-file restarts, and “green-white-checkered finishes,” and “lucky dogs,” and “wave-arounds,” and smaller gas tanks, and bonus points for winning during the regular season, and Lord knows what they did that we’ve already forgot about.
It may take the Supreme Court to stop Johnson. Or the Tea Party.
NASCAR can’t stop him. Forty-two other drivers on the track can’t stop him.
Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick gave Johnson the toughest run he’s had during the streak. Incredibly, he actually trailed Hamlin going into the final race. Hamlin finished 14th in the Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Johnson finished second and just won the title by 39 points this year. His previous margins, going backward, had been 141, 69, 77 and 56. He actually lost a championship by eight points back in 2004, but that was a weird year. Bush got reelected that year. The Cup champion was named Busch, Kurt Busch, and he too lost a tire but won anyway.
Remember back decades ago, when the Pittsburgh Steelers or the San Francisco 49ers were talking about “one for the thumb”? Sprint Cup champions get rings, too. Johnson’s now ready to fill up the other hand.
Knaus is the crew chief, but the team might as well be led by John Wooden, realizing, of course, that this is impossible since the great basketball coach passed away. Knaus, quite obviously, can suffice.
Hamlin won two more races than Johnson. Carl Edwards won the final two races. Kevin Harvick was more consistent than Johnson, which used to mean something. All have some of that hope that, yes, springs eternal.
The hope isn’t as strong, though, as it was back in 2005.
Source: http://nascar.rbma.com/on-track/drivers/33542-the-ruling-succession-consists-of-one
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