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Johnson adds another Cup
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| Driver Jimmie Johnson and his wife, Chandra, displays three fingers on Sunday in Homestead after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship for the third consecutive year. ASSOCIATED PRESS |
Third straight title ties record held by Cale Yarborough.
By JENNA FRYER
Associated Press
HOMESTEAD — Three championships down and Jimmie Johnson is already thinking about No. 4.
There’s no time to rest — not with Carl Edwards hot on his bumper.
Johnson tied Cale Yarborough’s 30-year mark as the only driver to win three consecutive titles, but Edwards made it clear he doesn’t intend to play second fiddle for long. Edwards won Sunday’s finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, yet still fell 69 points shy of dethroning Johnson.
“I shook his hand tonight,” said Rick Hendrick, Johnson’s car owner, “and he said ‘It’s going to be
different next year.’”
Not if Johnson, crew chief Chad Knaus and their Hendrick Motorsports team has anything to say about it.
“I could go race again next week and start the season and go for four,” Johnson said. “It’s on our minds. It’s not that we’re chasing a number, we just know what we’re capable of. We know we can do
better. It’s a search to do the best we can.”
Edwards, who led a race-high 157 laps en route to his series-best ninth victory of the season, ran out of gas as he crossed the finish line. To win his first title, he needed Johnson to finish 36th or worse.
Not a chance: Johnson won the title by finishing 15th.
“We won more races than Jimmie (seven), and we ran with him when he won,” Edwards said. “I know they’ll enjoy this championship, but they knew we were here.”
Indeed they did, constantly looking in the rearview mirror as Johnson chased Yarborough’s mark.
Yarborough won his three titles 30 years ago, under a different scoring system and in a very different NASCAR. He accomplished his feat when drivers scraped together the cash they needed to race, and the champion was the guy on top at the end of a long grueling season.
Johnson’s titles have been won in the glitzy new Chase to the championship format, where the best 12 drivers compete over a
10-race sprint to the title.
Johnson and his Hendrick Motorsports team have mastered the system. They’ve won their titles with consistency — he finished outside the top 10 just twice in this Chase, a 15th-place finish at Texas — and by winning eight of the last 30 Chase races.
They’ve also gotten very rich along the way: Johnson has won more than $2 million in the 10 Chase races this year.
Yarborough earned a combined $1.63 million in all three of his championship seasons.
Kevin Harvick finished second and was followed by Jamie McMurray and Jeff Gordon, who finished the year winless for the first time since his 1993 rookie season.
There’s no time to rest — not with Carl Edwards hot on his bumper.
Johnson tied Cale Yarborough’s 30-year mark as the only driver to win three consecutive titles, but Edwards made it clear he doesn’t intend to play second fiddle for long. Edwards won Sunday’s finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, yet still fell 69 points shy of dethroning Johnson.
“I shook his hand tonight,” said Rick Hendrick, Johnson’s car owner, “and he said ‘It’s going to be
different next year.’”
Not if Johnson, crew chief Chad Knaus and their Hendrick Motorsports team has anything to say about it.
“I could go race again next week and start the season and go for four,” Johnson said. “It’s on our minds. It’s not that we’re chasing a number, we just know what we’re capable of. We know we can do
better. It’s a search to do the best we can.”
Edwards, who led a race-high 157 laps en route to his series-best ninth victory of the season, ran out of gas as he crossed the finish line. To win his first title, he needed Johnson to finish 36th or worse.
Not a chance: Johnson won the title by finishing 15th.
“We won more races than Jimmie (seven), and we ran with him when he won,” Edwards said. “I know they’ll enjoy this championship, but they knew we were here.”
Indeed they did, constantly looking in the rearview mirror as Johnson chased Yarborough’s mark.
Yarborough won his three titles 30 years ago, under a different scoring system and in a very different NASCAR. He accomplished his feat when drivers scraped together the cash they needed to race, and the champion was the guy on top at the end of a long grueling season.
Johnson’s titles have been won in the glitzy new Chase to the championship format, where the best 12 drivers compete over a
10-race sprint to the title.
Johnson and his Hendrick Motorsports team have mastered the system. They’ve won their titles with consistency — he finished outside the top 10 just twice in this Chase, a 15th-place finish at Texas — and by winning eight of the last 30 Chase races.
They’ve also gotten very rich along the way: Johnson has won more than $2 million in the 10 Chase races this year.
Yarborough earned a combined $1.63 million in all three of his championship seasons.
Kevin Harvick finished second and was followed by Jamie McMurray and Jeff Gordon, who finished the year winless for the first time since his 1993 rookie season.
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| Season closes for Columbia |
