The Will To Win

I once heard the famed boxing journalist Burt Sugar say the sport he covered was the only one in which one opponent can physically impose their will on the other. Perhaps. Then again, had he watched today’s Martinsville Sprint Cup race, he might add NASCAR to the list.

Jimmie Johnson is the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls of stock car drivers. He’s better than everyone else, and he wants it more than anyone else. Today was a perfect example of both. Denny Hamlin had the car to beat. He had the passion of wanting to win in his home state. There was no way he could lose. None.

He lost.

Johnson imposed his will on Hamlin via an old-fashioned short track love tap and drove away, a move which even the notoriously surly Hamlin could acknowledge with nothing save a tip of the cap. It was a tad ironic seeing a few assorted losers in attendance at NASCAR’s most venerable track attempt to use Johnson’s car for target practice, their ire roused by his aggressive move. Wasn’t it what they came to see? Old school racing performed to perfection?

Alex Johnson, who won the American League batting title in 1970, once told a teammate on the then-California Angels, “You hit when you can. I hit when I want to.” So it is with Jimmie Johnson. When he wants it, he wins seemingly at will. Today he willed it. Instead of resentment, isn’t it time we gave him his due as the most purposeful driver in NASCAR with the results to back up the claim he is its purest example of the will to win?