NASCAR Cup Series

Cat-and-mouse game? Johnson admits he's not showing full hand

Published Oct. 3, 2014 3:03 p.m. ET

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Jared Turner

In six NASCAR Sprint Cup championship seasons, Jimmie Johnson has occasionally showed moments of great vulnerability, giving his competitors hope that there might be a proverbial chink in the armor of the driver and his vaunted No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team.

More times than not, however, Johnson has been the one sticking a knife in the competition when it came time to buckle down and run for a championship.

So to assume that Johnson -- who last won at Michigan on June 15 and has led a total of just 28 laps in the past 14 races -- isn't a serious threat for the 2014 Sprint Cup title is at best risky and at worst downright naive.

No, Johnson and his Chad Knaus-led bunch haven't looked as strong as teammate Jeff Gordon, Stewart-Haas Racing's Kevin Harvick and Team Penske teammates Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano for most of the season, despite winning three out of four races from late May to mid-June.

In three Chase for the Sprint Cup races held so far, Johnson has posted solid but modest results -- 12th at Chicagoland, fifth at New Hampshire and third last weekend at Dover.

But with seven races to go and all 12 remaining championship contenders' point totals reset to 3,000, Johnson is very much in the hunt for a seventh championship, which would tie him with Richard Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt for the most all time in NASCAR's top series.

In other words, ignore Johnson at your own risk. Keselowski, who raced him for the championship in 2012, knows better.

"The 48 team is a group that you never want to write off, for sure," said Keselowski, who leads the Sprint Cup Series with a season-high five victories. "Right now they're performing well -- he finished third at Dover (last weekend). I don't know what's going on behind the scenes of their team to really have a great answer for where they're at, so we'll all just lay it on the line on the racetrack and see what happens."

Though Johnson hasn't exactly laid it all on the line and done all he could to run up front and win the first three Chase races -- or the races leading up to the Chase -- when he was already guaranteed a playoff berth.

And that fact, as much as anything Johnson has accomplished in the past, makes him particularly dangerous with the Chase Contender Round set to kick off Sunday at Kansas Speedway.

"We are points racing, for sure," Johnson said. "Through the summer we just didn't collect many points, and we can't do that. And if we can't win a race right now to transfer (to the next Chase round), we better make sure that we're covering the points side of things and are going to transfer."

Despite conceding that he could use some additional speed in his No. 48 Chevrolets, Johnson fully expects to be among the four drivers who will fight for the title in next month's season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway

"I feel very confident that we can get to Homestead," Johnson said. "We've been like a third- to fifth-place car. That's OK. That's acceptable right now, but we know we need to get to Victory Lane. We want to get to Victory Lane, and I feel like with the tracks we have out in front of us, there's some really good chances for us."

Even if he's not ready to go for broke just yet.

VIDEO: A look back at Jimmie Johnson's Victory Lane celebration after winning at Michigan earlier this year

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