Jimmie Johnson on Texas: ‘The dream is to get my 84th win’
Jimmie Johnson knows the dream but expectations and reality offer two giant question marks as he chases it.
This weekend, the seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion will climb aboard his No. 84 Toyota for the second time in 2024. Johnson will race in the Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400 at Texas Motor Speedway.
Johnson is optimistic. With seven wins, he is the all-time wins leader at TMS. He is realistic, though.
“The dream is to go back to Victory Lane and get my 84th win. I don’t have a good sense of real expectations at this point,” Johnson said to The Racing Experts. “I just feel like Texas is going to really be the start of this stretch that I have high expectations for myself.”
Johnson earned his 82nd Cup Series win at TMS in April 2017, the last time he won there. With seven wins in 35 TMS starts, he has won 20% of the time he’s raced there.
In 2019, he started on the pole for the spring race. It was his 36th and, to date, last pole. He also has 16 top-5 finishes and 22 top-10s at TMS.
“Texas has been a great track for me over the years,” Johnson said. “Our team has made substantial steps forward. We still have a long way to go, but we’ve had a very exciting start to the 2024 season.”
Johnson has nine scheduled starts this year. That is one-fourth of the schedule. Most of his races are on mile-and-a-half tracks.
“I would assume and hope that towards the end of my events, I’ll be much more competitive (and) understand this car,” he said.
Johnson’s drivers – and teammates – John Hunter Nemechek and Erik Jones sit 19th and 20th in points, respectively, entering TMS.
Johnson also raced in the Daytona 500. He finished 28th, four laps down after a crash wounded his racecar in the opening laps.
The Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400 is set to go green just after 3:30 p.m. ET Sunday on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
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Dominic Aragon View All
Dominic Aragon is currently the editor-in-chief for The Racing Experts.
From Grants, New Mexico, USA, Aragon started watching NASCAR in 2004 and has been covering the sport since 2009. Aragon is a 2012 graduate of Grants High School and a May 2016 graduate of the University of New Mexico with a B.A. in Mass Communications & Journalism. Aragon has worked in local and national media, as a musician, and an educator. He is co-author of the 2024 book "All of It: Daytona 500 Champion Tells the Rest of the Story" with racer Geoff Bodine.
Aragon, his wife Feliz, and son Christopher currently reside in Grants, New Mexico, USA.
You can reach Dominic at daragon@theracingexperts.net.