CUP: Johnson Covets Road Course Victory

Sprint Cup

CUP: Johnson Covets Road Course Victory

Jimmie Johnson and his fellow NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers place a high degree of importance in winning on a road course...

Jim Pedley | http://www.RacinToday.com | Posted June 20, 2009 Sonoma, CA

Jimmie Johnson races hard and – when necessary – ruthlessly – but when it’s over it’s over. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

There are a number of things about Sprint Cup road racing which should and will be debated for as long as NASCAR opts to run races at places like Infineon Raceway and Watkins Glen International.

Things like, should NASCAR continue to run races at those places? And should a road race be inserted into the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship playoff lineup?

But there is one thing about NASCAR running road races that seems to be beyond debate, and that is the importance that drivers attach to winning at Infineon or The Glen. Most drivers will tell you that it is not only important to show they can handle life on the twisties, but that it in essential that they can prove they can.

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Jimmie Johnson would seem to have little to prove to anybody when it comes to his reputation as a driver. He has won the last three Sprint Cup Championships and in just his eighth full season in the series, he has won 42 races.

None of those victories have come on a road course, however, and on Friday he was asked how important that is to him.

“Extremely important,” Johnson said. “I’ll take it in any form of racing. I’ve run that Rolex 24 race all the time because I love road-course racing and want to be a part of that. I certainly would love to win in a NASCAR vehicle to round out my resume, so it’s really important.”

NASCAR fans bash road racing, the media bashes it and many drivers do.

It is simply not racing they say. It is boring they say. No passing, no wrecks, no fun. Watch IndyCars on the roads, or, gasp, Formula One? One columnist said he would rather take a lawn chair down to the freeway and watch Honda Civics go past. More chance for action and passing doing that, he said.

But among the required skills for drivers is ego. Not bad ego as in chest-pounding and trash talking. But ego as in a need to feel that they are among the best in the world at what they do.

They seem to especially need to prove that to their peers.

In NASCAR, there seems to be broad feeling that to earn that respect, you need to show that in addition to drafting bumper-to-bumper at 200 mph, you also need to show you possess road skills.

Such as?

“It’s hard to say what the particular skill set is,” Johnson said being good at places like Infineon and The Glen, “but there are a lot of things to it with the techniques of shifting and downshifting and putting together a series of corners and looking far enough ahead.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Pedley

RacinToday.com

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