Jimmie Johnson won his fifth Sprint Cup championship on Sunday, after finishing second in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida, behind Carl Edwards.
“I’ve always told you the first championship, the first win, that stuff has meant the most to me,” Johnson said. “This one, I think this takes the lead. It’s not that the other Chases weren’t competitive. We were stronger in the previous two Chases, at least, but this one, I am just so proud.”
Johnson trailed Denny Hamlin by 15 points coming into the race. But Hamlin struggled all day and finished in 14th. Like the previous four championships, Johnson’s latest was built on consistency. He won six races to Hamlin’s eight, but Johnson had 16 top five finishes.
“I think this year we showed what this team is made of,” Johnson said. “At times this season we didn’t have the most speed, but we had the most heart.” (The Associated Press)
Nascar: Johnson Underrated?
Can you be the winner of five straight Sprint Cup titles and still be considered underrated? Chad Knaus, Jimmie Johnson’s crew chief, thinks so, especially when Johnson is compared to the past greats. “I just think — and no disrespect to any of our elders or whatever you want to call them — the guys that raced back in the day, the Earnhardts, the Waltrips, the Pearsons, the guys like that; you hear a lot of what they say about the tenacity of those drivers and how aggressive they were and how they could do things with the race car that nobody else could do,” said Knaus. (Autosport.com)
Nascar: Or Is Johnson the Best Ever?
Of course, with every championship, Jimmie Johnson bolsters his case of being the best driver in Nascar history. Only Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt have more championships at the highest level of Nascar (seven each), but neither won more than two in a row. The Miami Herald enters the discussion. (Miami Herald)
Formula One: Squabble Over Lotus Name
The story of the off-season has so far been the fight over a team name. Lotus Racing wants to change its name to Team Lotus next season. But the Group Lotus, which is a separate company owned by Proton, a Malaysian carmaker, doesn’t want that to happen. The latest voice in the fight is Mike Gascoyne’s. “We don’t understand why Group Lotus don’t want to support us,” said Lotus Racing’s technical director. “We think we brought the brand great value.” (BBC Sport)
Formula One: Ferrari Fastest on New Pirelli Tires
Fernando Alonso, of Ferrari, was the fastest driver on the new Pirelli tires during a test session at Yas Marina in Abu Dhabi. Alonso drove 105 laps and finished with a best lap time of 1 minute and 40.529 seconds. Sebastian Vettel, the newly crowned drivers’ champion, was second by three-tenths of a second. (Autosport.com)
Formula One: Who Deserves a Drive?
Let’s get silly. F1 Fanatic asks which driver is most deserving of a race seat next year and offers cases for 17 drivers. So far, Nico Hülkenberg is running away with 77 percent of the votes. (F1 Fanatic)
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