For the other competitors, perhaps this should be a source of concern.
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Can a break lead to a breakout? Can an ensuing top performance lead to another top performance?
Throughout his career, Johnson has shown the ability to hit a hot streak — and stay on it.
— In 2002, as a rookie, he was 21st in points after the season’s second race. He earned top-10 finishes in 10 of the next 12 races to move to second in the standings, including a five-race run with a worst finish of seventh.
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— In 2003, he was fourth in points after an engine failure at Talladega, which came two races after a win. After Talladega, he reeled off seven top-10 finishes.
— In 2004, he won four of the last six races in the Chase.
— In 2005, he was never lower than sixth in the standings all season, but he opened with a worst finish of eighth in his first seven races.
— In 2006, he had top 10s in the season’s final six races.
— In 2007, he won four races in an early eight-race stretch, and then won four of the last five for the title.
— In the final 12 races of 2008, he won five times and finished outside the top 10 only twice — both finishes of 15th.
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Fast-forward through similar experiences to 2015, where he showed he hasn’t lost his ability. Last season he won at Texas in the season’s seventh race, then finished worse than third only once in the next seven races.
So when Johnson talks about being rested, about being recharged, perhaps it’s a sign of things to come.
On Friday at Bristol as he talked about the off weekend the Sprint Cup drivers just enjoyed, Johnson said that he feels “like the battery is charged and ready to go for the final stretch of the regular season and then the most important part of the year for us, which is the Chase.”
Heading into that stretch, though, he’s in an unusual position — that of trying to pick up the pace in the season’s closing races.
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He finished 40th at Watkins Glen, Sprint Cup’s most recent race, after an accident. In fact, he endured a rather uncharacteristic series of races of late.
He has two wins — at Atlanta and Fontana — but overall it hasn’t been the six-time champion’s usual season.
After Fontana, Johnson had four top-10 finishes — three thirds and one fourth.
Still, don’t count Johnson out of contention — not at Bristol or in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
He looks over his recent races and sees decent finishes, bad luck and “self-inflicted mistakes.”
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In just a few weeks, though, none of this will matter.
What will matter is that Johnson is in the Chase. Points will be reset based on wins. A championship run beckons. And perhaps no one has been better at managing the Chase than Johnson.
As he looks around the Hendrick Motorsports shop, Johnson sees nothing but enthusiasm. That’s a great sign — and perhaps a warning for other title contenders.
“Come Chase time, in the middle of the Chase, the way things are looking back at the shop and the excitement I see in all the departments, we’re expecting a good late-season surge for Hendrick Motorsports,” he said.
