NASCAR: How an all-time successful partnership decayed, fractured

On this weekend’s episode of In Depth with Graham Bensinger, seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson detailed the decay of his partnership with crew chief Chad Knaus.

Jimmie Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus were paired together at the start of the 2002 NASCAR Cup Series season, the former’s first season as a full-time driver of the #48 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports.

It was also Knaus’s first season with Rick Hendrick’s team, but the two had success right off the bat, winning three races and finishing in fifth place in the championship standings.

They went on to establish what is considered by many to be among the best driver-crew chief partnerships, if not the best driver-crew chief partnership, in Cup Series history.

The pair won 81 races and seven championships together, including five in a row from 2006 to 2010. But as with all good things, this relationship came to an end, and it was an unfortunate decay that led to its end following the 2018 season.

After winning the 2016 championship to tie Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt for the all-time record, Johnson got off to a solid start in 2017, winning three races by early June.

But his win at Dover International Speedway that month ended up being his final win of the year.

“When times got tough, Chad reverted back to the crew chief that he was when we first started,” Johnson said on this weekend’s episode of In Depth with Graham Bensinger. “Micromanaging, explaining where I was making mistakes, what I needed to do, how I needed to work on it.”

Bensinger asked what Johnson was thinking — and whether or not he wanted to tell Knaus to “F off”.

“I did,” Johnson admitted, “and that was…kind of the start of the decay over probably a five or eight-year period of time. And he and I both so wish we could go back and correct that. Because now looking back on it, it was a defense mechanism for him and he was only doing it because he cared, and I just got tired of hearing it. And so, I started firing back.”

The pair went winless in 2018, ending a streak of 16 straight seasons with at least not just one but two wins.

“We just won the championship (in 2016),” Johnson said. “We come back, start the 2017 season. And that really, really got under Chad’s skin that I wanted to be in Aspen and not in Charlotte. And things started to get personal then, and him questioning where my heart was with the team and the time and effort I wanted to spend to be with the team was really kind of the starting fracture point.”

After the 2018 season, Knaus moved to the #24 team of William Byron, and Kevin Meendering replaced him as Johnson’s crew chief at the #48 team. Before the 2019 season ended, Meendering was replaced by Cliff Daniels.

Johnson went winless in 2019, missing the playoffs for the first time in the process, and he went winless with Daniels in 2020, again missing the playoffs, before retiring.

After the 2020 season, Knaus was promoted to Vice President of Competition at Hendrick Motorsports. With Johnson having retired, Daniels began his role as the crew chief of new arrival Kyle Larson and the #5 team.

They won 10 races, the most of any driver since Johnson won 10 in 2007, as well as the championship together.

Johnson, meanwhile, made the switch to IndyCar with Chip Ganassi Racing for 2021. He drove the #48 Honda in the road and street course races and recorded top finishes of 17th place at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and the streets of Long Beach, California. He is set to return for the 2022 season, and he plans to compete in the Indy 500 for the first time as well.