IndyCar: Don't underestimate the impact of Jimmie Johnson

Seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson is set to compete in IndyCar this year, a move that cannot be underestimated when it comes to its impact on the popularity of open-wheel racing.

Jimmie Johnson retired from NASCAR Cup Series competition in November following a career that saw him win 83 races and a record-tying seven championships, including a record five in a row from 2006 to 2010.

But he made very clear, even back when he announced that he would be retiring just under a year beforehand, that his racing career would by no means be over once he emerged from the #48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet one final time at Phoenix Raceway.

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The 45-year-old El Cajon, California native signed a two-year contract with Chip Ganassi Racing’s IndyCar team to drive the #48 Honda in the road and street course races on the 2021 and 2022 schedules.

But no IndyCar fan who is truly a fan of the sport should be underestimating the impact that Johnson can — and will — have on it.

We hear all the time about how NASCAR is declining, and those claims aren’t necessarily wrong, although there has been a bit of a recent stabilization. We also hear about how IndyCar is on the rise, and those claims too aren’t necessarily wrong.

These are two racing series going in the opposite direction, and that has been the case for the last several years. But NASCAR is declining from such a high peak that Cup Series ratings still dwarf IndyCar’s.

NASCAR averaged roughly 2.970 million viewers per Cup Series race in 2020. IndyCar, excluding the first Indy 500 outside of May in the race’s 104-year history and the Friday afternoon race in early October, averaged roughly 664,000.

We’re already seeing new IndyCar hype in Jimmie Johnson and even Hendrick Motorsports fan groups on social media. Daytona 500 countdowns were accompanied by IndyCar season countdowns, something you would rarely ever see among NASCAR fans before this year.

While Johnson won’t be running the full schedule, the fact that the season begins with two consecutive road and street course races could allow the sport to gain additional traction with new fans for the oval races, especially since there are just two oval race weekends outside of the Indy 500.

We’re talking about a NASCAR legend: a seven-time champion, a two-time Daytona 500 winner, a two-time Southern 500 winner, a four-time Coca-Cola 600 winner and a four-time Brickyard 400 winner.

This isn’t just some young NASCAR driver coming to IndyCar for a few seasons because he wants a change of scenery. Johnson has absolutely nothing left to prove.

Johnson moving to IndyCar to compete on a near full-time basis is one of the biggest moves that the sport has ever seen from a popularity standpoint, and I can guarantee you that IndyCar will see that reflected in its ratings throughout the upcoming season.

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Johnson is scheduled to make his IndyCar debut on Sunday, April 18 at Barber Motorsports Park, which is where he was slated to have his first test in April of last year before the coronavirus pandemic struck and cancelled it. The season-opening Honda Grand Prix of Alabama presented by AmFirst is set to be broadcast live on NBC beginning at 3:00 p.m. ET.

IndyCar: Don’t underestimate the impact of Jimmie Johnson

By Asher Fair | Apr 17, 2021

Seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson is set to compete in IndyCar this year, a move that cannot be underestimated when it comes to its impact on the popularity of open-wheel racing.

But no IndyCar fan who is truly a fan of the sport should be underestimating the impact that Johnson can — and will — have on it.