NASCAR champ won’t cut back in 2009

Now that Jimmie Johnson has made NASCAR history, what will he do for an encore?

Try to make more history, of course.

Johnson won his third consecutive Sprint Cup championship this past Sunday at Homestead Miami Speedway, joining Cale Yarborough as the only two drivers in NASCAR’s 60-year history to accomplish the feat.

But there’s a twist to that: After he won his third straight title in 1978, Yarborough chose to forego going for four in a row, voluntarily cutting the number of races he ran in 1979 to spend more time with his family in Florence, S.C.

Yarborough has never regretted that decision, even though he now must share one of NASCAR’s most elite records with Johnson.

But Johnson isn’t going to scale back next season. He’s looking to put himself in a class of his own by winning a fourth consecutive championship.

And given how strong Johnson has been in each of the last three Chase runs — particularly this season’s playoffs — it’s not an exaggeration to think he not only can win four in a row, but maybe five or even six.

“It’s on our minds,” Johnson said. “It’s not that we’re chasing a number, it’s just what we’re capable of. There are times we look back and say there are tracks and weekends we didn’t get all we could.

“That’s more of what’s left behind in us. We know we can do better. It’s that search for trying to be the best we can more than it is a number and that kind of thing.”

While Johnson may be the driving force for the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team to go for four, it’ll be up to crew chief Chad Knaus to once again lay the foundation and do the due diligence to pave the way for Johnson’s on-track efforts.

“We think with the team that we’ve got, the resources that we’ve got with Hendrick Motorsports and Team Chevrolet behind us, we can definitely go and bid for four championships in a row,” said Knaus, who became the first crew chief in NASCAR history to win three straight titles (Yarborough had two different crew chiefs during his three-year run). “Why wouldn’t we? Give me a reason why not to. I think that’s the mentality we’ve got to have.

“To get four championships in a row you have to get three. And we’re fortunate to get three. If we buckle down and do what we need to do, we’ll be in contention for our fourth championship next year. If that means I have to get up at eight o’clock tomorrow morning and go to work to do it, I’ll do it.”

Admittedly, it was a somewhat of a hard road earlier in the season for Johnson, who failed to reach the top-10 in eight of his first 12 races, one of the rare times in his Cup career that Johnson has struggled.

His fans — and for that matter, his competitors — likely expected more from the then-two-time defending champ. As strong as he finished 2007, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion Johnson would pick up where he left off in 2008.

Only it didn’t work out that way.

Johnson and Knaus realize the mistakes they made — primarily going light on off-season testing — and won’t make that same error again. To hear team owner Rick Hendrick, as focused as Johnson and Knaus were to win No. 3, they’ll be even more determined to win No. 4 next season.

“I know how bad both of these guys want it,” said Hendrick, who now has won a record eight Cup championships as a team owner. “I know what they go through when I watch them in comparison to other drivers and crew chiefs. I’ve never seen anyone in my 25 years that are willing to sacrifice any more or as much as they have just because they want it so bad.

“Usually sometimes when guys get it one time or twice, they maybe back off a little bit. They’ve gotten there. But not these guys. This just makes them even hungrier. As long as they have this burning desire, with their talent, they’ll be a force every single year.”

While he just cleared off space on his mantle for his third championship trophy, it’s pretty obvious that Johnson cleared off even more space just in case.

“I’m ready to start tomorrow, to go race this Sunday,” Johnson said. “We’re ready to go for No. 4.”

Jerry Bonkowski is a featured contributor to GateHouse News Service and can be heard nationally on Sirius NASCAR radio. He can be reached at NASCARColumnist@Yahoo.com.