Jimmie Johnson Talks Historic NASCAR Run, Chad Knaus Fallout, INDYCAR Stint

There are several ways to define domination. One of them is Jimmie Johnson’s grip on NASCAR in the latter half of the 2000s.

Johnson won the Cup Series championship in five consecutive seasons from 2006-10 and six times in eight years from 2006-13. Later, Johnson captured the 2016 Cup championship. The former NASCAR superstar provided his perspective on how that historic run began and the impact that driving for Hendrick Motorsports during his entire Cup Series career (three races in 2001 and full-time from 2002-2020) had on him.

“It was a big shock, to say the least,” Johnson told Kevin Harvick about joining Hendrick Motorsports on the latest edition of “Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour.” “I ran three races in 2001, and the team was still kind of coming together. We didn’t have our full-time crew chief. … I think my best finish was like two laps down in 26th, so that ’01 year was like, ‘wow, this isn’t just a step-up, this is five or 10 steps up to go Cup racing,’ so I was pretty worried. That worked very well because during the offseason, once we had Chad [Knaus] in place, I just dug in, and I leaned on the system that is Hendrick and wore Jeff Gordon out over ideas, notes, how he drives. He didn’t really even have notes going at that point in time, but I was extracting all this stuff and making my own.

“I’ll never forget the first Atlanta race, which was the second or third race of the season, I was able to run on the lead lap and finish in the top-five. I was like, ‘this place is tough.’ I ran around Mark Martin all day long. I finished in the top five. ‘I’m going to be okay,’ and that light bulb went off just to continue to lean on the Hendrick system and have them keep teaching me.”

Johnson is tied with Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt for first in NASCAR history with seven Cup Series titles and is tied for sixth with 83 career Cup wins. Over that five-year championship run (2006-10), Johnson averaged seven wins and 16.2 top-five finishes per season, most notably taking the checkered flag 10 times in 2007.

Prior to the championship run, Johnson finished as the runner-up for the Cup Series title in both 2003 and 2004, which were just his second and third seasons on the NASCAR circuit; he finished fifth in both 2002 (Johnson’s rookie season) and 2005.

One of the constants throughout Johnson’s success was crew chief Chad Knaus, who was the crew chief for the No. 48 Lowe’s car from 2002-18. Johnson elaborated on the success that he had with Knaus — but also their falling out as a team.

“He was the bad cop. I was the good cop within the team,” Johnson said of Knaus. “He did so much pushing that I didn’t need to, but I knew the way he pushed others, he expected that from me. And I felt like I needed to take some stress off of him, and I made sure that I had my s— together. That was the responsibility I took in hand. He’d nudge me occasionally. There were certainly moments where it got heated and Rick [Hendrick] would have to get involved. But the great thing is, and for so long, it was never personal. It was also funny, when somebody says ‘I really like what you did but,’ Chad always had that ‘but’ that he would throw in. Our pressure in what we put on each other was fine until maybe two or three years left in our run, and it became personal.

“I was afraid and frustrated that my career wasn’t winding down the way that I wanted it to. Chad, the same. Where we were always aligned and never kind of personally attacked each other, we started to indirectly. It wasn’t something that we intended to do, but it became personal, and that eroded away at our success more than anything, and then, eventually, Rick separated us.”

Johnson left the Cup Series after the 2020 season and began driving in the INDYCAR Series. Why did he make that decision?

“Everything in my career has been driven by fear, and that just takes a toll on you. When I stepped away [from NASCAR], I didn’t want to be driven by that anymore,” Johnson said about joining INDYCAR. “I didn’t like kind of who I was becoming in the way my headspace was during the course of a season and living through those moments. Kids really helped define that, and I realize and see ‘man, I just didn’t handle that right, or I wasn’t thinking right, or my head wasn’t right,’ whatever it was. When I went into INDYCAR racing, that was the dream when I was a kid. …

“I’m not driven by fear anymore. I want to enjoy. I want opportunity, and that’s why I just kind of ignored the challenge that I had ahead of myself and committed to it and just went to go have fun.”

Johnson competed in two INDYCAR seasons at Chip Ganassi Racing, racing a combined 29 races from 2021-22. Meanwhile, Johnson has raced in the last three runnings of the Daytona 500 (2023-25) since leaving the sport as a full-time driver. This year, he finished third in the “Great American Race.” Johnson was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2024.

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