This Just In: JJ Still The Best

And no, sadly I don’t mean JJ Yeley, although I am a huge fan. Jimmie Johnson is still the guy to beat, despite what analysts are saying. It’s easy to get caught up in the hoopla of Trackside and the TNT driven, NASCAR.com, but don’t doubt the threat Johnson poses going into the NASCAR playoff series. Sooner than the results are posted up each week we are bombarded with stories on the various motorsports websites about who’s on top and who doesn’t have a shot and it makes it easy to forget history.

The simple history is that Jimmie has won the last four championships and until someone else is the defending champion, he’s the guy to beat. Further more, he’s the only guy in the series to finish inside the top five in points in each full season that he has competed in during his Sprint Cup tenure, only finishing outside the top two twice.

Perhaps a more dangerous statistic is the fact that in the previous three seasons Jimmie has only finished outside the top 10 nine times during the last 13 races of each season. With only nine finishes of eleventh or worse in the thirty-nine races that makes him dangerous. With four of these coming in the three races before the chase, it makes the next set of stats even more effective.

While Jimmie is sitting back in the 5^th position in points, there is little need to worry. The seeding system NASCAR has implemented gives Jimmie an edge that, right now, only one other driver has. Barring a massive collapse, Jimmie is almost certain to make the Chase. As of now this will leapfrog Jimmie from 5^th in points to tied for 1^st with Denny Hamlin.

Now comes the real proof of Jimmie’s magic late in the season. With three more chances at bonus points, no driver comes close to doing what Jimmie does during the Chase. Since the 2006 season Jimmie has been unbeatable in the Chase, logging top two finishes in 20 of 40 races with 12 wins.

You may not like Jimmie, you may think he is boring, but going into the Chase in the lead may seal his fifth in a row. I’ve found the majority of stories about him to be too focused on the recent slump and less focused on the possibility that the team may be concentrating all current efforts on the last ten races. It’s possible that Chad and Jimmie’s magic is just off this season, but it’s still likely that they’re loading the cannons for the last ten races of the season and going for the win until then. Whatever the case may be, you have to acknowledge he’s the best until another driver proves otherwise.