NASCAR: Is Jimmie Johnson’s Cup Series career on the decline?

With just seven top five finishes since the start of last season, is the NASCAR Cup Series career of seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson on the decline?

Since he first drove the #48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet in three races toward the end of the 2001 NASCAR Cup Series season, Jimmie Johnson has known nothing else when it comes to competing in the Cup Series. He has not missed a single race since the start of the 2002 season, and he has driven the same car for the same team since that time.

But all good things must come to an end, and it is no secret that retirement for the 42-year-old may be on the horizon within the next few seasons given the fact that he is in his 17th season as a full-time driver in the sport.

The main question regarding Johnson’s career pertains to how much he has left in the tank. Is his Cup Series career truly on the decline?

This question is asked every season, and usually the answer is “no”, and that answer comes as a result of Johnson winning several races — and sometimes even another championship.

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However, earning even one victory has been a struggle for the seven-time Cup Series champion this year. He has not won a race since he won the race at Dover International Speedway last June, meaning he is on a career-long 47-race win drought. His previous career-long win drought was a 24-race win drought in the 2016 season.

Johnson, whose career Cup Series win total of 83 is tied for sixth place on the all-time wins list, is in the midst of what has been by far his worst Cup Series season. He currently sits in 14th in the championship standings with just two top five finishes and eight top 10 finishes through the season’s first 24 races, and even Lowe’s, his longtime sponsor, announced that this will be their last season as a sponsor in the Cup Series.

Since Johnson began driving the #48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet on a full-time basis in the 2002 season, he has never won fewer than two races in a season, excluding this season. Also excluding this season, there has been just one season during which he has won fewer than three races and there have been just four seasons during which he has won fewer than four races.

After recording at least 11 top five finishes in each season from the 2003 season to the 2016 season, he recorded just four top five finishes last year, and after recording at least 20 top 10 finishes in each season from the 2002 season to the 2015 season, he recorded 16 top 10 finishes in the 2016 season and just 11 top 10 finishes last season.

It is hard to deny that Johnson’s career is on the decline. While some of his lack of success so far this season can be attributed to the fact that Chevrolet teams have been slow to develop the new Camaro ZL1 to its fullest potential, there are several Chevrolet drivers, including Johnson’s teammate Chase Elliott, who have had success this season.

In fact, Elliott earned his first career Cup Series victory this year, and he has recorded a total of seven top five finishes and 13 top 10 finishes. Plus, another one of Johnson’s teammates, Alex Bowman, sits right below Johnson in 15th place in the championship standings, and he is only in his first full season driving for Hendrick Motorsports. Bowman has recorded two top five finishes and nine top 10 finishes so far this season.

Johnson’s statistics have been slowly dropping from season to season over the last several seasons before the Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 was even introduced to the Cup Series. While he did win the 2016 championship, he did so after a season that was one of the worst of his career; he simply got hot at the right time and rode that momentum to a record-tying seventh career title.

That happening again does not look likely after the extremely disappointing season that Johnson has had so far. While he could certainly break out of his slump and surprise a ton of people, the odds of this are lower than they have ever been during any of his previous slumps, of which there are not many, by a sizable margin.

Is Jimmie Johnson’s career really on the decline, or will he break out of what has been a lengthy slump and win his 84th career NASCAR Cup Series race, which would tie him for fourth place on the all-time wins list? Does he have what it takes to win what would be a record-breaking eighth Cup Series championship?