Jimmie Johnson suffers major wreck in Grand Am, but unhurt
January 29th, 2010
This weekend, several NASCAR drivers, including Jimmie Johnson and Juan Pablo Montoya, will participate in the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, matching wits and wheels with many of the best drivers from racing series all over the world.
While it’s very cool to see familiar faces in unfamiliar environs, is it a good idea for NASCAR’s leading lights to risk their seasons in one-off events like this?
For the second year in a row, Jimmie Johnson has had a problem at the Rolex that could make observers wonder whether he ought to be doing this kind of thing with his offseason. Last year, Johnson sliced a tendon in his left middle finger while trying to cut a hole in his firesuit. And this year was almost much, much worse.
Johnson was tooling around the track in a Daytona Prototype in practice when a much slower GT pulled out in front of him. He swerved to avoid it, and ended up hitting an infield wall. Hard. So hard that for a time, the GAINSCO/Bob Stallings team considered junking it entirely.
The car was eventually salvaged, and Johnson fortunately walked away unhurt. But just suppose he hadn’t? Suppose he’d gotten injured severely enough to affect the NASCAR regular season? How pleased do you think Rick Hendrick and Lowe’s would be at that point?
Over at Unrestricted, Jim Pedley makes the very good point that this could be the kind of thing that forces team owners to block their drivers from participating in other series. It’s the same question athletes in other sports face when they’re considering outside events like the Olympics. So what exactly is the challenge here? Pedley explains:
The Daytona
Prototypes are quite power[ful] and quite fast. The track they race on at Daytona is
quite fast and very tricky. Plus, the cars run through the night and share the
track with GT cars which are quite a bit slower and which can be driven by
people who barely meet the definition of professional driver.
All of which must make team owners just thrilled that their prize ponies are running in this race. Still, it’ll be tremendous fun to watch — and just try to tell NASCAR drivers not to race. See how far that gets you.
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