Meet IndyCar’s 45-year-old rookie: Seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson
At the time, Johnson was in the thick of his 19th and final season in NASCAR’s elite Cup Series. But he was already preparing for the second act of his career — one that gets underway Sunday at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Ala., where the seven-time NASCAR champion makes his debut as a 45-year-old IndyCar rookie.
As career turns go, this is a wild one.
While a handful of IndyCar racers have switched to NASCAR’s heavy stock cars, it’s trickier and far less common for stock-car racers to transition to IndyCars, which are faster, more finicky and less forgiving.
For Johnson, this isn’t a promotional stunt or a flight of fancy.
It is a full-blown, high-stakes career change for the next two seasons, in which he will run 13 of IndyCar’s 17 annual events — all of the road course and street races but not the Indianapolis 500 or other races on high-speed ovals.
Why risk a sterling résumé in one discipline (Johnson’s seven Cup Series titles tie him with Richard Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt for most in history) to start over as a rank beginner in another?
“It’s not real complicated: It’s what I want to do,” Johnson said in a recent interview. “IndyCars are so intense and so fun to drive. I just felt after I tried it: ‘I’ve got to do this! I know it doesn’t make sense, but I’ve got to do it!’ ”
The seed was planted in 2018, when Johnson got the chance to run a few laps in Fernando Alonso’s Formula One car. The speed, performance and precision blew his mind, even though he had been racing since he was 4.
A compulsive planner, Johnson always knew he would need another competitive outlet after walking away from NASCAR’s grueling 38-race schedule. With open-wheel racing his new obsession, he set his sights on the U.S.-based IndyCar Series and started gauging the interest of team owners and potential sponsors.
He found a willing partner in Chip Ganassi, who was amenable to Johnson’s plan of running just road and street races, with longtime IndyCar racer Tony Kanaan handling the ovals. Carvana signed on as the No. 48 Honda’s primary sponsor.
The association with Chip Ganassi Racing speeds up Johnson’s learning curve considerably, giving him access to engineering expertise that was won 13 IndyCar championships and experienced teammates such as six-time and defending IndyCar champion Scott Dixon.
He also gets Franchitti, 47, a four-time IndyCar champion, as his coach. The two have been friends and mutual fans for nearly 15 years. Their new mentor-mentee relationship has deepened the respect.
“As a rookie with the mind-set of a seven-time champion, Jimmie is fascinating to witness because he has got that hunger to learn of a rookie but with the work ethic of a seven-time champion,” said Franchitti, who became Ganassi Racing’s driving adviser after he retired in 2013. “He is so structured in the way he thinks about things. He learns so quickly. And the lengths he’ll go to to learn something and gain an advantage is incredible.”
What Johnson is attempting is profound.
Whether it’s NASCAR, off-road racing, Formula One or IndyCar, a driver can’t be quick without reaching the limit of the car’s performance. Finding that limit isn’t simply a matter of bravery but a combination of technical smarts and keen attention to the car’s feedback at top speed.
The bravery lies in how close to “out of control” a driver is willing to push the car — particularly through the corners, when it is going so fast that it feels as if the rear end is about to spin around. That line — the limit just before catastrophe — is the gut check that separates great drivers from journeymen.
The challenge facing Johnson is that the feedback an IndyCar gives is totally different from that in NASCAR. IndyCars weigh half as much as stock cars (roughly 1,600 pounds to 3,200), have more horsepower and, most significantly, have aerodynamic wings that effectively anchor them to the track with tons of downforce.
“Because it has got so much downforce, with the wings pushing the car into the ground, you could drive an IndyCar on the ceiling above 100 miles an hour,” Franchitti said. “That’s how much grip those wings produce. So the grip level is very, very, very high. But you’ve got to get to that limit.”
Franchitti speaks from experience, having tried Johnson’s career switch in reverse when he gave up IndyCar in 2008 to compete in NASCAR.
It didn’t go well. He was baffled by the heavy stock car’s sluggish braking and balkiness in the corners. It would have taken years, he said, before he felt fully in command and able to tell the team how to make the car go faster. With his NASCAR team folding before season’s end, he returned to IndyCar in 2009 to race another five years.
While Franchitti can explain an IndyCar’s physics, Johnson must learn to feel for himself that treacherous line between what his No. 48 Honda can and can’t do via every sensory input available, including the G-forces rounding turns at top speed.
With each practice lap, the car has taken his breath away. Twice during tests, he has screamed to Franchitti over the radio: “I am having so much fun! It’s awesome!”
Johnson explains: “I’m feeling G-forces that I’ve never felt in my career in a corner. It’s like: ‘Oh, my gosh! It’s not going to stick! It’s going to fly off the road!’ But I come in [to the pits to debrief with engineers], and they say: ‘Nope! There’s still more [available speed].’ ”
Johnson has seized every chance to test the car, looking for its limit. He has also strapped in Honda’s high-tech simulator to get familiar with racing circuits. Yet he has yet to race in traffic; his only opponent to date has been a stopwatch.
That changes with Sunday’s green flag.
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