Fryer's Five: Jimmie's rise one for the books

CONCORD, N.C. – We whine and complain when Jimmie Johnson cruises to yet another victory, never bothering to stop and marvel at just how incredible his history-making march has been.

He's smooth and steady every season, then kicks it into another gear nobody else can match. Johnson's 46th career victory Saturday night – his third in five Chase races this season – moved him closer to a record fourth-straight Cup title.

Now at the halfway point in the 10-race Chase, Johnson has a sizeable 90-point cushion over teammate Mark Martin. And he's headed to Martinsville Speedway, where he's, how do you say, kind of good?

But just how good is he? In a week in which NASCAR celebrated its pioneers and all-time greats with the selections for its first Hall of Fame class, Johnson continued to lay the groundwork for his own eventual induction.

"There's some great drivers that have been in our sport, for sure, but you look at his record since he entered this sport, and you've got to say that he'll go down as one of the greatest drivers that's ever been in the series," team owner Rick Hendrick said.

In just 286 starts over nine years, Johnson has moved into a tie with Buck Baker for 13th on the all-time wins list. His third consecutive championship last season made him just the second driver ever to three-peat and first since Cale Yarborough 30 years ago.

And now he's on pace to tie teammate Jeff Gordon with four titles. Only seven-time champions Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt have more.

Both Petty and Earnhardt were named this week to the first Hall of Fame class.

Gordon, with his 82 career victories, will one day join them.

And soon after Johnson calls it a career, he will too. Maybe then people will begin to respect just how special he is.

"Sometimes you don't get that recognition until later on in your career," Hendrick said. "I think you've got to look at Jimmie's stats … and you've got to give him credit because it's been a phenomenal string of statistics that he's been able to put together here in the last eight years."

Nobody associated with Hendrick Motorsports saw this coming when Gordon brought Johnson to their attention. Johnson, a little-known driver in the then-Busch Series, had summoned up the courage to approach Gordon in a driver meeting to ask for career advice. It led to a conversation that so impressed Gordon, he told Hendrick the fledgling driver was the guy for their upcoming expansion.

Hendrick trusted Gordon's word, but the sponsor was a different story: Hendrick and Gordon had lured Lowe's away from Richard Childress Racing, and after several so-so seasons, the sponsor wanted a superstar. The hiring, Hendrick recalled, came down to a meeting with chairman Robert Niblock that Johnson had to nail.

"I thought we had the deal already done, and we were getting ready to sign it with Lowe's, and the chairman and CEO walked in, and he had the veins in his neck popping out, and he said, 'I want to know, can you win?' " Hendrick remembered. “I was like speechless, and Jimmie said, 'I can win.' I thought, 'Well, I'm glad you're confident.'

"It's worked out well. I never dreamed that we'd be looking at Jimmie this short in his career being a four-time champion."

And one of the greatest ever.

1. It's going to take a miracle for Juan Pablo Montoya to get back into the championship hunt:

And that's a shame for everyone because Montoya could have made this a very interesting Chase down to the wire.

He came into Charlotte with a 3.5 average finish in the Chase and a ton of buzz surrounding his unbelievable title surge. Then a horribly bad break on an early restart ruined it all, through no fault of his Earnhardt Ganassi Racing team.

Jeff Gordon restarted as the leader after a round of pit stops, with Montoya lined up several rows behind. There was nowhere for him to go when Clint Bowyer slowed in front of him, and Montoya crunched into the rear of his car, making contact that instantly crumpled his right-front fender.

It didn't help, either, when the sequence caused Mark Martin to run into the back of Montoya's No. 42.

"They all kind of went and then they checked up and I checked up and I don't know somebody didn't slow down and just ripped of the whole rear of the car," Montoya explained. "It was weird, actually a lot of things on the race track you could see and the cautions never came out. I think they got criticized last week and I think they went too far this week. It is what it is. Whether you like it or not they are in charge."

Fender damage early ruined Juan Pablo Montoya's night and possibly his title chances.

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The damage at both ends caused Montoya to drop like a rock through the field. At one point, Montoya pleaded with crew chief Brian Pattie for permission to pit. Pattie knew a stop under a green flag would give them no chance at a comeback, and urged Montoya to hang on until a caution.

It came just a few seconds later when Montoya brought it out himself with a spin, setting up a confusing few moments when he tried to get in front of the leader, had to stop his car on the apron and then went down pit road two-wide – which is against NASCAR rules. When the dust settled, he was two laps down and his title hopes were over.

Ranked third in the standings at the start of the race and just 58 points behind Johnson, Montoya's 35th-place finish dropped him to sixth. He's now 195 points out of the lead with just five races remaining.

It's a monstrous hole to climb from considering how consistently good the Hendrick cars are, and it's disappointing that one of the few drivers capable of challenging them will almost certainly be relegated to a bystander the rest of the way.

Montoya isn't all that good at Martinsville, so next week might have been a struggle, but it was going to be anything goes over the final month and there's no reason to believe the No. 42 team wouldn't have put up a fight.

It would have been fabulous to watch – his aggressive driving and his outspoken nature – and the presence of a newcomer would also have been rather refreshing.

Now we'll have to wait for next year.

2. Yes, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is down in the dumps right now:

But he really is running better. The problem, though, is that the lack of results once again has Junior struggling with his confidence.

"I've been riding it out, but there comes a point where you don't want to ride it out no more. You've just had enough," he said this weekend at Lowe's Motor Speedway. "It's been so low. The highs have not been very high, and the lows have been terribly low. That's hard to want get back up and try again the next week when you take such a beating. I don't know what else to do."

For the third straight race, Dale Earnhardt Jr. spent time in the garage.

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Well, for starters, he should take a deep breath.

His No. 88 team has come a long way since his last trip to Lowe's, when he might have had the worst car on the track and finished an embarrassing 40th. That was his last race with crew chief Tony Eury Jr., his cousin, and the absolute low point in his pressure-packed career.

But things are not even close to how bad they were in May. No, he's not running anywhere near his Hendrick Motorsports teammates, and that's certainly going to make a driver question his own skill. But, if he had any luck at all, he'd have tangible results to prove to the world that his team is improving.

Remember, it was only two weeks ago that Earnhardt qualified second at Kansas and led 41 laps before he was penalized for a missing lug nut. It took him out of contention for the win, and his day slipped even further into despair when an engine issue sent him to the garage before the end of the race.

Still, his spirits were a whole lot higher then, and he even gave crew chief Lance McGrew a hearty endorsement to stay with his team next season.

Now, he's even questioning his credentials to select his team members.

"I don't think I'm the guy to leave that decision up to because I wouldn't make the right one," he said.

That's what frustration does to a driver. It makes him so blind to the small gains he's made – he was good at New Hampshire and California, until late wrecks gave him more bad finishes to add to his miserable 2009 total – that it seems as if nothing ever goes right.

It's heartbreaking to watch, because no matter what his detractors say Earnhardt is a talented driver. But in order to get back to a competitive level, he's first got to repair his shaken confidence. Until that is done, it won't matter if Chad Knaus ran his race team, the results would be the same.

Richard Childress, a longtime family friend and car owner for the late Dale Earnhardt, has faith that Junior is going to get things turned around. And, he's adamant that he's got the talent to be a champion.

"I don't know if you ever heard the song that Hank Williams Jr. sings, 'It's tough living the life of a very famous man,' and that's what Junior is doing," Childress said.

"Everybody's got their expectations so high, and when you don't fulfill those expectations, people think you are not there. But Junior can still drive a race car; he can compete; he can win and he will win a championship some day."

Once Earnhardt believes that again himself, things will be fine.

"I thought we had turned the corner at Loudon," said Hendrick. "It was probably one of our better cars, and then California, Kansas, good car, real good car, and then this week a very disappointing qualifying run, and then we had the problems with the transmission in the race.

"Sometimes when you feel like you're snake bit, it's hard to show up and try to pretend that everything is great. But I can tell you this, I met with those guys earlier today, and I'm as committed as I know how to be, and we're all committed to each other, and we're just going to keep digging."

3. And Brad Keselowski roared again:

Give Keselowski credit for standing up for himself and speaking his mind, something he's done quite frequently both on and off the track the past several months. That's rubbed many the wrong way, and Keselowski is taking his share of criticism for his outspokenness and disregard for etiquette.

But count his current Nationwide Series boss as someone who thinks it's all much ado about nothing.

"I think people underestimate Brad and how strong he is, because I certainly did," Earnhardt said. "I'll be honest, I underestimated how mentally tough he is."

Keselowski showed that on the last lap at Talladega in April, when he outlasted the carnage to steal his first Sprint Cup Series victory. Since then, he's stood tall in his feud with Denny Hamlin, didn't blink when NASCAR asked him to be aware of the Chase contenders he was racing around at Kansas, and, most recently, publicly called on Penske Racing to strengthen its organization.

Keselowski, who will be leaving his developmental deal with Hendrick Motorsports to drive a Cup car next season for Roger Penske, has deduced that his future employer is about "100 people short of where they need to be to compete with Hendrick."

"I've communicated that with them and just wanted to know what their thoughts were on that," Keselowski said. "Resources-wise, Penske is phenomenal. They have the same resources if not more than what Hendrick has to work with. It's just a matter of installing a depth in the personnel."

It's a bit questionable to call out your new boss so publicly, and that's another example of the behavior so many are questioning.

Hendrick driver Jeff Gordon stood up for Keselowski and characterized him as a good guy. But he also noted that his aggression is creating the controversy.

"He wants to make his mark and show what he is capable of doing," Gordon said. "When you step up your aggressiveness, you ruffle some feathers. That could work for him or against him however he chooses it to play out."

Earnhardt doesn't think there's a problem with anything Keselowski has done of late. Although he believed Keselowski was at fault for the Nationwide accident with Hamlin at Dover, Keselowski held his ground.

"He ran into Denny at Dover, ran into him … and I was like 'Damn, Brad!' '' Earnhardt recalled. "And he was like, 'Hey man, that's my deal.' That's Brad."

Does he have the right to act that way?

Earnhardt doesn't think so.

"People can drive however they want. They're in control of their cars as long as they're not bouncing off the walls and taking people out for fun,'' Earnhardt said. "Brad ain't out there wrecking people for the fun of it. He's out there trying to win races and [at California], in my opinion, he climbed in a couple guys' heads, if you want to know the truth."

4. Richard Childress knows his team is struggling:

Childress left Lowe's Motor Speedway last season as the winning car owner after Jeff Burton's victory rekindled Richard Childress Racing's championship chances.

My, how far they have fallen.

The drop off at RCR gave Childress very little to celebrate on the year anniversary of the team's last Sprint Cup victory. None of his drivers are in the Chase, and he's officially on the clock in the sponsorship search to keep his organization at four cars. Childress said before Saturday night's race that he needs to have funding in place by next month's season finale to run the No. 07 Chevrolet fulltime next year.

Richard Childress promises to make his race team more competive.

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"No one is happy when you aren't running well. I'm not happy. No one is," Childress said. "We just try to control it as well as we can."

Compounding the performance issues is the dissatisfaction of star driver Kevin Harvick, who has one year left on his RCR contract. Comments Harvick made last week before California have led many to believe he's already made up his mind to move on in 2011, but Childress offered little insight to what could happen.

Instead, he acknowledged driver frustration and even said he understood Harvick's position.

"Kevin's a driver that really wants to go out and run well and win. I don't blame him for being upset when we don't," Childress said. "We'll just see how everything plays out in the future. I didn't see his interview. I've heard some comments on it. But whatever happens, happens. We'll just move forward."

Childress has not been afraid to make wholesale changes to his organization this season, or in years past. And he's vowed to not stop until he finds the solution that turns his teams around. Nothing is immune from scrutiny, including all personnel, and Childress said there's more to come over the next few weeks.

Talks continue with potential sponsors for the No. 07, and Childress remains supportive of Casey Mears, who has performed well over the past few weeks but could be a casualty of the economic issues plaguing the entire industry.

"I would have liked to have seen him in our cars a year when we had our cars really going," Childress said. "We don't know what happened yet. All of a sudden, we fell off of the wagon. We will get back on it though, I promise you."

Take Childress at his word on that, because he's proven repeatedly over the years to bounce back from adversity. He wasn't always at the top of his game even when the late Dale Earnhardt drove for him. He's figured out how to climb back before, and he'll stop at nothing to do it again.

5. The NASCAR Hall of Fame was a very good idea:

It doesn't really matter if you agree with the five selections for the inaugural Hall of Fame class. What is important is that last week's selection of Bill France Sr., Bill France Jr., Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt and Junior Johnson has created conversation at a time when NASCAR could use some buzz.

The five selections were made Wednesday, and the debate surrounding the picks carried into Saturday night's race. Beyond the discussion of whether or not David Pearson was wrongfully excluded was an entire second conversation about who should be inducted in 2011.

Yes, that's right. NASCAR has finally found an issue in which people feel enough passion that they are speculating on what will happen a full year from now.

"I think the fact that people are concerned about who was in that first group says a lot about our sport and how important this Hall of Fame is," Jimmie Johnson said. "I know that over the next four or five years there is probably going to be more heartache and more frustration about who is selected.

"I look at it as a positive. People are taking about our sport. We've got conversations taking place about our Hall of Fame, and a lot of people's emotions are showing up."

There are a lot of things that could have been done differently, including giving the two Frances automatic inductions and freeing their two spots up for Pearson or Bobby Allison or Lee Petty or Red Byron – or any of the other nominees.

And NASCAR could have considered a larger first class, much the same way other Hall of Fames did their inaugural inductees. While NASCAR kept the first class to five, the Pro Football Hall of Fame's first class had 17 people, while the Basketball Hall of Fame ushered in 15 people and two full teams.

But the bottom line is that this Hall of Fame is long overdue, and the participants of NASCAR are thrilled to see some long-awaited recognition to the people who built their sport.

"We're already talking about 2011, it's pretty cool," Mark Martin said. "It's going to take a while to get all those guys in, but it's exciting to finally have it started and underway. I just wish maybe we could have got it started a long time ago, many, many years ago. Even if we didn't have the facility that we have now, if we could have had the core. There are so many core people that need to be in there."