The man to beat

Jimmie Johnson brushed back talk of winning a third consecutive Sprint Cup championship last year. He figured it was too high a mountain to climb.

At season's end, Johnson was perched atop Mount Everest.

The easy-going Californian became only the second NASCAR driver to win three consecutive championships. It's a remarkable feat he shares with only Cale Yarborough.

During last month's NASCAR media tour in Concord, N.C., Johnson -- sporting an audaciously thin five-o'clock shadow -- masterfully danced around questions of a four-peat.

Johnson opted to look forward, rather than dwell on his 2008 totals of seven wins and a series-best six poles.

As impressive as those numbers are, they pale in comparison to the mental edge Johnson enjoys over his rivals heading into the season-opening Daytona 500 on Sunday. No one else in the NASCAR garage seems willing to declare Johnson's championship streak over, in part because nobody wants want to hand Johnson any extra incentive.

The prospect of standing alone as the only Cup driver to win four consecutive titles is incentive enough in itself.

"Nope, Jimmie doesn't need any motivation," said Kyle Busch, who flamed out in the 10-race postseason after winning eight times in the 26-race regular season.

While no one dared to draw a line in the sand to challenge the defending champ, Johnson's own crew chief, Chad Knaus, may have stoked the flames of Johnson's competitive fire. Knaus had the colossal gall to suggest that Johnson is simply a "key ingredient to the team's mix, but he is not the key."

Johnson, sitting beside his crew chief, responded with a forced smile.

Predictably, a stoic Knaus continued with a straight face.

"We always have to figure out what motivates our guys," Knaus said. "There's no way [Johnson] could have won without this being a team effort. That's just the facts.

"But if he was to be replaced by somebody else, would he be as successful? Probably not. Would he be as successful without me? Probably not."

Johnson won two of six races, including the Daytona 500, after Knaus was suspended for a rules infraction during the 2006 season. But Johnson didn't fare as well when Knaus was booted from the garage for another infraction in 2007.

Johnson appeared ripe for the picking early last season as he and Knaus were seemingly out of sync. Neither was pleased with the other's efforts, particularly at intermediate tracks where they had dominated the previous two seasons.

Even when Johnson was bad, he was still good enough to win at Phoenix in the spring. Then, he and Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. continued to slump before he found Victory Lane in Indianapolis.

"I felt helpless in what our team was doing," said Johnson. "We didn't have an ideal setup for the [Car of Tomorrow]. What the 48 [Johnson's car] was doing was clearly wrong . . . the 88 [Earnhardt] was ahead of us. "

Johnson and Knaus stirred the pot at midseason, testing extensively and cooking up a potion that remedied their problems. They entered the Chase in third place behind Busch and Carl Edwards, but vaulted atop the points standings in Race 3 of the postseason when he outdueled Edwards in a thrilling finish in Kansas.

After Edwards hurt his own title chances -- triggering a wreck at Talladega and getting into a distracting spat with Kevin Harvick -- he fashioned a furious charge. But Johnson never flinched, and when the checkered flag fell on the season-finale at Homestead-Miami, Johnson had won the title by 69 points.

So, can anyone stop Johnson from winning a record fourth straight title? Is he really the man to beat?

"I never thought I would be that guy to beat," Johnson said. "You can't get caught up in what people say and you can't put pressure on yourself.

"I know someday it will all come to an end. I still believe we will be a threat."

Unless the competitive balance dramatically shifts, Johnson's stiffest competition should come from Edwards, Greg Biffle, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch. And he'll keep an eye on the rest of the Hendrick Motorsports Dream Team -- Gordon, Earnhardt and Mark Martin.

"I absolutely believe we will all make the Chase," owner Rick Hendrick said. "You couldn't ask for a better mix than this. But I think there are 15 to 18 drivers with legitimate shots at making the [12-driver] playoffs."

Johnson, who has 40 career Cup victories, predicts two-time champion Tony Stewart -- who switched teams to become driver for and co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing -- has to be counted among those with a legitimate shot at the Chase.

"They don't have much to lose," Johnson said. "They have the tools, so I feel those guys will be a threat."

Still, as Kyle Busch explained, Johnson remains the man to beat. "He'll always be the favorite," Busch said, "until someone beats him."

Contact Ralph N. Paulk at (804) 649-6851 or .