Why Johnson’s playoff failure won’t tarnish his legacy

In a time before coronavirus, on 9 April 2017 at Texas Motor Speedway, defending NASCAR Cup champion Jimmie Johnson got his latest title defence moving.

A difficult start to the campaign in which Johnson bothered the top 10 just once, a ninth place at Phoenix, preceded a lowly 15th at the Martinsville short track where his #48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet had won nine times previously and showcased the pedigree that entered him into the very exclusive seven-time champions club with Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt Sr.

But a good move on Joey Logano at Texas with 16 laps to go brought Johnson his first win of 2017, which he followed up in the very next race a fortnight later at Bristol - the 11th time in his career he has won at least two successive races. The Californian veteran seemed to be building momentum towards eclipsing Petty and Earnhardt's long-established record.

Then came a run of four scrappy races, yielding nothing better than eighth at Talladega, before Johnson beat Kyle Larson at Dover for his third win of the campaign. But that would be as good as it got for Johnson's 2017 campaign. He didn't make the top five again in the regular season - his best showing over the next six months being a third in the Dover playoff round - and he could only end the year tenth.

In the 120 races he has contested since Dover 2017, victory lane has become something of a distant memory as team-mate Chase Elliott has assumed the mantle of Rick Hendrick's lead driver - in much the same way as Johnson muscled team favourite Jeff Gordon aside to become Hendrick's main man earlier in his career.

Fellow stablemates Alex Bowman and William Byron are both on an upward curve too and are a thorn in Johnson's side as he attempts to find the 84th Cup win that would put him level with Bobby Allison and Darrell Waltrip as the fourth-most prolific winner in Cup Series history (Gordon, for the record, has 93, David Pearson 105 and Petty 200).

After ending a winless 2018 - his first since becoming a Cup regular in 2002 - only 14th, long-term crew chief Chad Knaus was switched to Byron's car and Cliff Daniels drafted into Johnson's camp. But the change didn't have the desired result and 2019 proved worse still. A crash at Indianapolis in the regular season finale left Johnson the wrong side of the playoff bubble at the cut-off, missing the end of season fun for the first time.

Having decided that 2020 would be his final full-time season, Johnson admitted in a short video posted to social media in January that he had been "out of character" in recent seasons, spent largely focused on "chasing a statistic".

"This is just one final time, and it feels so good to be able to let go of that chasing part," he said. What he didn't know at the time was that come his final start at Daytona in the 2020 regular season finale, chasing is exactly what he'd be doing.

With 10 drivers having already secured their places in the playoffs thanks to their various wins and others - such as reigning champion Kyle Busch - through on points, prior to last Sunday's race there were three drivers fighting over the final two final spots up for grabs in the 16 that will contest the title run-in.

Matt DiBenedetto of Wood Brothers Racing and Byron were sitting precariously just above the bubble, with Johnson lurking just four points in the red with Daytona's predictable threats awaiting the trio.

"When I look back at the disqualification at Charlotte and then missing the Brickyard 400 due to my COVID-19 positive test and only miss it by six points - we did all that we could this year" Jimmie Johnson

Johnson had shown signs of momentum in the three races prior - the first ever Cup race on the Daytona road course and the Dover double-header. Across these three races, Johnson took fourth, seventh and third respectively for an average finishing position of 4.6, best three-race average in over five years, which compared favourably against 17.3 for DiBenedetto and 13.3 for Byron.

At Daytona, Johnson's pair of fifth places in stages one and two put him in a good position heading to the final phase, which was red-flagged after a pile-up caused by Tyler Reddick squeezing Kyle Busch into the wall that left Erik Jones with nowhere to go.

Johnson, Byron and DiBenedetto all avoided damage and took the restart with 17 of the 160 scheduled laps to run, but Johnson wasn't so fortune in the next skirmish. Logano spun into Matt Kenseth, sending the 2003 champion sharply up the track into Johnson - minding his own business on the high line. Fighting to maintain control, he then hit Reddick, leaving the front of his Camaro looking as if someone had taken a can opener to it.

Despite a gallant effort from his pit-crew to repair the damage, Johnson's 17th place wasn't enough as team-mate Byron took his maiden Cup Series win and DiBenedetto, in 12th, beat Johnson's tally by just six points. After stepping out of what was left of his car, those six points were on Johnson's mind.

"We had a really good car, the last couple of months, we've been really getting our act together and running well," he said. "[I'm] definitely disappointed to not be in the playoffs - that was the number one goal to start the year.

"But when I look back at the disqualification at Charlotte and then missing the Brickyard 400 due to my COVID-19 positive test and only miss it by six points - we did all that we could this year.

"Cliff Daniels and these guys on my team - they pour their guts out for me."

Let's look at both races Johnson mentions in his post-race comments, and another he didn't but is an equally big part of him failing to reach the playoffs.

The first Cup race back after the COVID-19 hiatus at Darlington on 17 May is a good place to start. Having zipped past Bowman with just nine laps to go in the 90-lap opening stage, Johnson was well-placed to take what would have been just his third stage win since NASCAR adopted the format for 2017 - banking 10 points and a bonus playoff point for the privilege - when slight contact with Chris Buescher put Johnson in the fence. It ended his afternoon, and swung 10 unexpected points in Byron's favour.

A good, clean race at Charlotte's Coca Cola 600 on 24 May yielded second place, Johnson's best result since that last win at Dover back in 2017. But those points were lost when his car failed post-race scrutineering due to the "rear alignment" being off. Jay Fabian, NASCAR's managing director says it the "same thing we check at least a handful of cars for post-race every event." The first disqualification for a technical infringement of Johnson's career couldn't have been more ill-timed.

After Charlotte, Johnson had a strong run of results that included a third at Bristol and top 10 finishes at Atlanta and Martinsville, but they would prove be his last until the Daytona road course. In the middle of this bad run, including a dreadful weekend at Pocono in which he finished 21st and 16th, Johnson took a COVID test after his wife Chandra began to show symptoms and it came back positive.

Johnson deserves a huge amount of credit for taking the threat of the novel coronavirus seriously, especially at a time when the quantity of confirmed cases in the United States was skyrocketing and there was precious little leadership coming from the White House. For the first time since the New Hampshire finale in 2001, 663 Cup races prior, Johnson wasn't on the starting grid at the Brickyard; Justin Allgaier took his place and finished 37th.

Heading into 2020, it was better to view Johnson not as the seven-time champion looking to regain his crown, but as a new, fresh challenger looking to break clear from the midfield. He and new crew chief Daniels went through the growing pains and gelled together throughout 2019 to give it a final shot this year, but circumstances were just not on his side.

A crash can happen to any racing driver at any time. Disqualification for a technical infringement should not have happened. Being cautious through a once-in-a-century global pandemic and testing positive for that virus is just plain unlucky. But the combination of these three events proved a fatal cocktail for Johnson's playoff, and championship hopes. He could have scraped through if two had happened, but all three in the same season was just one bridge too many for Johnson to cross.

As with Bolt, Johnson's legacy will not be lessened by this final season. What will be remembered instead are the times when he wowed his sport at his peak and constantly went about disturbing the record books

Having failed to make the cut, and with just 10 races of his full-time Cup career to run, questions will now turn to Johnson's legacy. The idea that it will be tarnished or lessened because he didn't fight for the title in his last two seasons is nonsense.

It is very rare that a champion, in any sport, will go out on top, clutching yet another championship trophy or gold medal. Alain Prost claimed his fourth Formula 1 world title at the end of 1993 before retiring, but this is the exception rather than the rule.

Take Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt as an example. Winning the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay Olympic golds in Beijing in 2008 (although the team's relay gold was later stripped after a team-mate took a banned substance), but his continued success at the London and Rio Games marked Bolt out as one of the all-time great sportspeople.

At his final Athletics meeting, the 2017 world championships in London, Bolt could only manage third in the 100m, pulled out of the 200m and, in his final competitive race, pulled up in the relay with a hamstring injury.

As with Bolt, Johnson's legacy will not be lessened by this final season. What will be remembered instead are the times when he wowed his sport at his peak and constantly went about disturbing the record books.

Besides, as he made clear after Daytona, there are still 10 more races for him to go out on a high.