Is it just me, or is Jimmie Johnson now the Tiger Woods of Stock Car Racing? Not in the sleazy womanizer who can’t drive sense. But in the best in his field, so much better than everyone else that all you can do is wonder who’ll come in second, make you want to root against him even though he’s probably a perfectly nice guy way. Although, when I speculated that Tiger was a perfectly nice guy, I may have been wrong.
When Johnson took the lead Sunday with twenty laps to go in the Auto Club 500, there was nothing left to do but wait to see by how much he’d win. Oh, there was the off chance that his car would start sputtering on the straightaway, ala Mario Andretti. But barring a catastrophic mechanical failure, it was pretty much all over with twenty victory lap for Johnson to enjoy. The #48 car cruised in for his 48th career victory.
Scott Speed, the driver with the best racing name, briefly held the lead again this week. He’s got to pull one out at some point this season. And, yes, I do plan to mention that every week until he does win one. How else can I point out my incredible prescience for having predicted just the week before that he was due for a victory?
The Auto Club 500 was a good race. It always is. I felt a let down, though, like I do in week 2 of every NASCAR season. Sort of like watching the meaningless Pro Bowl two weeks after the Super Bowl (thank goodness the geniuses in the NFL fixed that – now the meaningless Pro Bowl is even more irrelevant the week before the Super Bowl.) No matter what happens, week 2 can never quite match up to the Daytona 500 the week before. But now that we’ve got that out of our system, we can settle in and enjoy the rest of the 2010 NASCAR season – rooting for whoever is chasing behind Johnson’s bumper.
