Gentleman Johnson best in the biz

Everybody wanted to speak to the fact that Jimmie Johnson had the best car last week at Dover. I want to tell you something in case you missed it: The No. 48 car had the best driver.

The final 30 laps of Sunday's race were a display of perfection from a driver's perspective, as good as any I've seen.

Here's a driver who's won the Daytona 500, won the Brickyard 400 twice and sits 15th on the all-time wins list. He's won 15.36 percent of the Cup races he's entered, which is the best active winning percentage in all of NASCAR. In fact, aside from Johnson and Jeff Gordon (14.7), no other driver has a winning percentage in double digits, and that includes Kyle Busch (9.26) and Carl Edwards (9.47).

Oh, and he's the three-time defending champion.

Yet, I don't believe Johnson gets the credit he deserves.

So what's it going to take for him to get it?

Let me start by saying this: I believe he already is great, and in time will rank among the all-time greats. And I believe that his peers feel the same way. Johnson not getting the credit he deserves has more to do with popularity than anything else. Fans want excitement; fans want action. And that may not necessarily synchronize with Johnson's style.

If you're a purest – if you've driven a race car – then you appreciate what he did in driving from ninth to first at Dover. Part of what made that win so exceptional was his ability to drive through the field, passing the likes of Mark Martin, Greg Biffle and finally Tony Stewart, one of the greatest ever, without using his bumper. Not many drivers can do that and win, which only further speaks to Johnson's skill.

Johnson has a gentlemanly type approach to driving, but it doesn't detract from his ability to win.

The only thing I feel left for Johnson to do that would help cement his place among the greats is to win on a road course.

I have to believe on a personal level this is important to him as well. Drivers always compare themselves to one another. In this case, Johnson measures himself against Gordon and Stewart, because between them they have 15 road-course wins. I think this is part of their foundation for being two of NASCAR's best ever.

Does a race car driver have to have won on a road race to be great? Of course not. But when it's the only discipline of racing where you haven't won, then it's probably pretty important. Why? Because it's the only potential debate remaining.

In fact, I can speak to how significant winning on a road course appeared to be for Dale Earnhardt.

With the exception of winning the Daytona 500, I've never seen him happier after winning a race as the day he won at Infineon back in 1995. That day, I drove alongside him on the cool-down lap. I looked over at him and gave him the thumbs up, and there he was, wearing his open-faced helmet, grinning from ear to ear, acknowledging in his own way what he had accomplished.

I'm not sure that ever really registered with the fans, but it registered with me. I could tell that win was very, very important.

From my perspective, this – winning on a road course – is the only hurdle left for Johnson to clear.

From the fan's perspective, the only other thing missing may be for Johnson to be part of a rivalry – for there to be somebody standing between him and that fourth consecutive title. But you can't create that. You can't fabricate that. Rivalries are a product of drivers' personalities – not necessarily the human being driving the car, but their driving personalities. And I think Johnson going through his career, putting up these kinds of numbers without a rivalry, is a story within itself.

Anybody can knock the hell out of someone, and 99.99 percent of all rivalries are created when one driver takes something from another – or at least it's perceived that way. But Johnson just doesn't do that and he doesn't have to, and I think that's why, more than anything else, I appreciate what he's accomplished. It's not just what he's accomplished, but how he's accomplished it.

With the Car of Tomorrow, NASCAR has taken away much of the engineering advantage and put more responsibility in the hands of the drivers. The days of one driver having a two- or three-tenths-of-a-second advantage over the field because of a superior car are gone.

This is supposed to be a new era, the era of the driver. This is the era in which Jimmie Johnson is dominating. And he's done it on a consistent basis. What more proof do you need that the guy is great?