The Long Reign Of Jimmie Johnson

The seven-time champion is NASCAR’s biggest superstar. Can he also help lead the sport into the future?

- Bill Saporito

It was down to two. The Monster Mile, a concrete racing oval at Dover International Speedway in Delaware with a reputation for grinding expensive stock cars into junk, had done its work. Only the number 48 of Jimmie Johnson and the number 42 of Kyle Larson were in position to take the checkered flag. Larson had the faster car by far and had dominated the race, leading for 241 laps. Meanwhile, Johnson had negotiated the Monster like a truant pleading for leniency. He was running on worn tires; he’d been in the lead for a grand total of four laps.

Yet now, a late yellow caution flag, which requires a driver to slow down because of a hazard on the track, meant the outcome rested on a final restart. When the green flag waved, Johnson feathered his Chevy SS past Larson’s Ford to beat him into turn one, and held the lead throughout turn two when a last-lap wreck behind both of them ended the race in number 48’s favor. “You put that rabbit out in front of me and I’ll chase it down. It’s just the way I’ve always been,” Johnson said afterward. Larson, a rising star and just 24 at the time, was left to rue the craft and craftiness of the 41-year-old veteran driving the second-best car, who had just left him in the rearview. “I got to get better at that,” Larson said.

Don’t sweat it, Kyle. You’re not the first rabbit Johnson has run down. In a prior win at Bristol Motor Speedway earlier in the season, he had bested Clint Bowyer, taking the lead on lap 480 of 500, leaving an outstanding racecar driver sputtering like a misfiring engine. “It’s Jimmie Johnson,” Bowyer said afterward. “You try everything you possibly can, and I was starting to do some pretty desperate things…and then you just realize.”