CUP: Title Hopefuls Not Stressing

Sprint Cup

CUP: Title Hopefuls Not Stressing

Jimmie Johnson is 14 points up on Denny Hamlin and 38 ahead of Kevin Harvick...

Tom Jensen | Posted November 05, 2010 Fort Worth, TX

Jimmie Johnson battled back from adversity at Charlotte Motor Speedway in October to keep his title hopes alive. (Photo: Getty Images)

Ask Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin or Kevin Harvick about the pressure of competing in the closest three-way Chase for the Sprint Cup in NASCAR history and they will tell you it’s enormous — for the other two guys, that is.

Friday at Texas Motor Speedway, the three title protagonists each professed to be relaxed and carefree, suggesting that whatever pressure there is at the moment isn’t affecting them.

Nor will it change their plans for Sunday’s AAA Texas 500 at the 1.5-mile superspeedway. None of them qualified well — Johnson was 17th, Harvick 26th and Hamlin 30th.

“Coming from the guy and the team who's qualified in the 20s and 30s all year, I mean, Friday's haven't meant squat to us,” said Harvick.

Still, poor qualifying efforts or not, none of three admitted to any stress.

“I don’t necessarily feel more pressure,” said Johnson, who leads Hamlin by 14 points and Harvick by 38 with three races to go. “I think I feel more pressure trying to defend something. The small margin that we have, it’s really easy to know what I need to do – I need to win the race. I need to finish ahead of the 11 (Hamlin) and the 29 (Harvick) and I think that’s going to mean me winning the race. The week has been really easy for me where other weeks coming into Texas concerned the mind in more of a defensive mode trying to protect and worrying about things. It’s all offense right now so I feel really good about things and feel less pressure for this Texas race than I did last year.”

Although he is in an exceptionally tight title battle, Johnson is buoyed by his experience: He has won the last four championships, as well as 19 of the 67 races run in the history of the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

“We know we can go out and win races,” said Johnson. “We know these are three really good tracks for us. We need to go out and do what we should do and need to do. Those thoughts are there and you need to learn how to deal with those emotions and understand how that pressure makes you respond and act. Again with the last four years and how they’ve turned out, I have a lot of confidence in those areas. I’m in a great place and ready to go racing.”

Hamlin and Harvick, not surprisingly, disagreed.

Asked Friday if the pressure was on Johnson, Hamlin allowed as how he felt it was.

“I buy that, for sure,” said Hamlin, who won the spring TMS race. “I think it’s on him (Johnson) to protect. He’s not going to race like he has to protect, we know that. He’s got to look in his mirror for two different guys and both of the teams that he’s going to look in the rearview mirror at have won races this year, have shown they have the speed and what not to keep up with him. I agree with that, I definitely think that it’s tougher to be the one that’s being chased versus chasing.”

“This is what you want,” added Harvick. “You want to have a chance for a championship. You want to be in contention and whether we win or lose, this is what we set out at the beginning of the year to do. And I think it's important to work as hard as you can and I think everybody alongside of me is working as hard as they can and we're going to do everything we can to try to win. Whether it's good enough? I don't know. But this is fun. This really is fun. It's not like running bad. It's fun because you're running good and you have a chance and that's really all you can ask for is to have a chance.”

For what it’s worth, Johnson’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate and fellow four-time Sprint Cup champion Jeff Gordon said Harvick is the one driver with the least pressure on him at the moment.

“To me, the advantage that Kevin Harvick has is that he really has nothing to lose,” said Gordon. “He's the chaser there, so they can really go for broke, there is really no threat of losing third and so they can just really make gutsier calls. I think when you are the leader, you are on the fence there.

Johnson, on the other hand, has the pressure on him, in Gordon’s estimation.

“I think the real pressure and the toughest part (is) to be the leader in a tight group like this in a tight battle,” Gordon said. “The nice thing is that they have done it for the last four and they have great experience and confidence so if anybody can do it, they can. I think it is unique for all of them. I know how bad Denny wants, how bad everybody wants to knock that No. 48 off that pedestal. there is a lot of motivation, but, each race that goes by, the intensity increases and the pressure increases because of how much is on the line. To those three guys, this is every single thing they've worked for their entire lives to be right here in this position.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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Tom Jensen

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