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CUP: Johnson Keeping It Simple Still
Written by: Tom Jensen   
11/06/2009
Fort Worth, TX
 
Jimmie Johnson leads the points in the NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup as the series heads into Sunday’s Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. (Photo: Getty Images) » More Photos

Tony Stewart owns half a NASCAR Sprint Cup team. Kyle Busch races as much as he can in all three of NASCAR’s top divisions. Carl Edwards and Clint Bowyer have won NASCAR Nationwide championships while racing full-time in the Cup series.

None of that interests Jimmie Johnson.

All he wants to do is win NASCAR Sprint Cup championships, something he’s on the verge of doing for the fourth year in a row.

Maybe one of the secrets to Johnson’s success — along with the ample resources of Hendrick Motorsports and the genius of Johnson’s crew chief, Chad Knaus — is his single-minded focus.

“I'm finally good at something,” Johnson said Friday morning at Texas Motor Speedway. “Why dilute that? Why start doing a lot of other things, do it half-assed? I'm not saying in the future those opportunities would be more appealing if I wasn't driving a car. But just right now, man, I'm finally good at something. It's taken me 34 years to get to this point. I don't want to dilute it.”

And with the NASCAR Nationwide and Sprint Cup cars so different now, the urge to moonlight simply isn’t there for Johnson.

“I'm not very good
in a Nationwide car,” said Johnson. “So it's no fun to go run in the car, run 15th all day long, beat up my confidence, then hop in the Cup car and do great with all the extra horsepower. That's one aspect to it.”

Nor is he about to emulate Stewart’s serial entrepreneurship.

“The other side of it is, I've never been too interested in being a car owner,” said Johnson. “I've had a lot of great opportunities from Nationwide, Truck, motocross, rally car, off-road teams. Especially as time goes on, there's more and more opportunities there. I don't want to do something, I don't want to enter into a business relationship or into another part of my professional career in an area that I don't have a lot of knowledge in.”

So for the foreseeable future, the El Cajon, Calif., native is going to concentrate on doing the one thing he’s done better than anyone else over the last four seasons: racing for Sprint Cup championships.

“I like having a little extra free time, spending time with my family, my wife, traveling a little bit, keeping some available kind of mental space so that when I get in the Cup car, I'm not irritated, whatever it may be,” said Johnson. “I think it kind of helps with the whole mindset I have, as well. I have plenty to do, but I'm not so overworked that I just have a short fuse and things frustrate me, that kind of thing. So I do also have three, hopefully four years of proving to myself that this formula's working really well and to not change anything.”


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