NASCAR Cup Series: Will Jimmie Johnson win a race in his final season?

Will Jimmie Johnson close out his full-time NASCAR Cup Series career with his first winning season in three years in 2020?

Seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson recently announced that the 2020 season will be his 19th and final season as a full-time driver in the series and his fourth and final season chasing his eighth career championship.

Johnson tied seven-time champions Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt for the lead on the all-time titles list with his seventh championship back in the 2016 season, three years after winning his sixth championship and six years after winning the fifth of five consecutive titles.

The 44-year-old El Cajon, California native’s retirement announcement comes following his second career and second consecutive winless season.

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After winning at least one race — in fact, at least two races — in each of his first 16 seasons as a full-time driver, which ranks third on the all-time list for consecutive winning seasons at any point in a Cup Series career, he failed to win a race for the first time in the 2018 season and then failed to do so again in the 2019 season.

Johnson’s longest win drought entering the 2017 season was 24 races, and it took place in the 2016 season, when he still won the championship with five victories in the 36-race season’s other 12 events.

But ever since tying Cale Yarborough for sixth place on the all-time wins list and moving to within one win of a fourth place tie with Darrell Waltrip and Bobby Allison on that list with his 83rd career victory at Dover International Speedway in June of 2017, Johnson hasn’t found victory lane in a points-paying event.

This race was the 13th race on the 2017 schedule, so Johnson is now on a 95-race win drought, which is nearly four times as long as his previous career-long win drought.

Can he end that win drought by tying Waltrip and Allison and perhaps even passing them on the all-time wins list in his final season behind the wheel of the #48 Chevrolet next year?

Comparing Johnson’s winless 2018 season to his winless 2019 season, it’s hard to believe that the latter is the season which resulted in his first ever missed playoff appearance.

Compared to the 2018 season, when he still came just one corner away from winning the round of 16 playoff race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway roval and advancing to the round of 12, which he would have done had he not spun out in that final corner even without a victory, he showed so much more pace at so many more tracks in the 2019 season.

But he was collected in incident after incident in 2019, and the majority of these incidents were not of his own doing. After finishing in a season-high third place in the rain-shortened race at Daytona International Speedway in early July, he finished in the top seven a grand total of zero times in the entire second half of the season.

His speed in no way resembled that statistic.

In 2018, his average starting position was a career-low 19.2. He improved that by 5.7 positions to 13.5 in 2019. In 2018, he led 40 of the 9,764 laps that he completed, and he led only six races. In 2019, he led 131 of the 9,798 laps he completed, and he led 10 races.

In 2018, he recorded two top five finishes and 11 top 10 finishes. In 2019, he recorded three top five finishes, 12 top 10 finishes and one pole position.

Johnson is still more than capable of running at the front. The 2018 season was a rough year for him. The 2019 season was stronger, but he couldn’t capitalize in large part due to unfavorable circumstances. As long as he can keep it clean in 2020, he should be able to find victory lane at least once and get back to the playoffs.

Johnson remains confident that that will be the case. Here is what he had to say a few weeks ago, according to NASCAR.

"“I still have that fire and I am coming back next year and it’s not a mail-it-in year. It is a year when we’re going to win races and compete for a championship.”"

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Maybe he won’t win an eighth career NASCAR Cup Series championship next year, but it’s hard to see Jimmie Johnson going down without a fight. It all comes down to this, and three straight seasons (and what would be a 131-race span) with zero trips to victory lane and perhaps two straight seasons without a playoff berth is not how he wants to go out, nor is it how he should go out given the progress he made from 2018 to 2019.

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