Jimmie Johnson ‘tired of running fifth’ but says team is improving

The seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion is showing some understandable signs of frustration, but he’s also got his eyes on steady gains for the 48 team.

Unless something changes during the summer months, NASCAR journalists and historians are going to look back on the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season and spend a lot of time digging in to just what it meant for Jimmie Johnson. Long past the point where only his winless drought, now at 36 races, or exactly the length of one full season, was a subject of conversation, we’re now forced to move on to the fact that Johnson and the 48 team really haven’t been very competitive at all.

Johnson’s fifth-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600 was just his second top-five of 2018, and it’s being lauded in some corners as a great result. That would be true for some drivers, and it’s not inaccurate considering his average finish for the 12 prior races was 16.6.

But this is a seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion we’re talking about, and a driver who has never had a winless season since he joined the top circuit full time. It’s really grading on a curve to suggest that he should be satisfied just running in the top five — and as he told NASCAR.com after Charlotte, he’s not.

"I’m tired of running fifth, I’m tired of running whatever it is. …We’re getting closer. The No. 4 car wasn’t out there … and the No. 18 looked pretty far up there. We’ve definitely improved to the pack, I don’t know about the fastest cars. But we will go home this week and work our asses off to try and do it again."

Johnson isn’t wrong about any of that. The last six weeks have been much better than the first seven, with two top-fives, four top-10s and no finishes outside the top 20. The team is trending in the right direction.

It’s just not clear what simply working harder can do. None of the Hendrick Motorsports Chevys have been particularly stout this year, and one could definitely make a case that Chase Elliott and his inability to run up front and challenge for race wins is a story on the same level as Johnson’s. This is not what anyone expected when the new Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 entered the mix.

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To get Johnson and the 48 bunch back on track, it’s going to take an organization-wide and possibly manufacturer-wide breakthrough of some sort. The driver you’d expect from a champion is there, but right now, the tools he needs to compete at the level we’ve come to expect from him aren’t. If that doesn’t change over the next few months, be prepared for Johnson to sound even more uncharacteristically frustrated come the fall.