Jimmie Johnson will contest the full 2022 NTT IndyCar Series season in 2022, he announced Dec. 15.
Johnson will drive the Carvana-sponsored No. 48 for Chip Ganassi Racing, with his slate including his first attempt at the Indianapolis 500.
“I’m going #FullTime next year!” Johnson tweeted. “I can’t wait to get behind the wheel of the @Carvana machine for the full @INDYCAR season, including the #Indy500. #NoFinishLines.”
The news follows a 2021 season where Johnson ran 12 IndyCar races, with a best finish of 17th twice in his final two starts of the year.
Carvana will sponsor the No. 48 in 16 of the 17 races, with American Legion filling the other event at Iowa Speedway.
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Rutherford is the managing editor of Frontstretch, a position he gained in 2015 after serving on the editing staff for two years. At his day job, he's a journalist covering music and rock charts at Billboard. He lives in New York City, but his heart is in Ohio -- you know, like that Hawthorne Heights song.
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Why?!!
My guess is he enjoys the challenge, AND he has sponsors to pay the bills / provide the ride.
I know I’ve always seemed to enjoy picking up a new sport/game more than I’ve enjoyed maintaining a higher skill level – working on tedious details to fine tune and pick up tiny, incremental increases in skill is where it starts turning from fun into work.
Most racing series benefit from having a few folks out there guaranteed to create some cautions – so in that sense he is valuable to the sport. Jokingly I’d say he might find he prefers travelling the country driving a race car to picking up the groceries and going to parent-teacher conferences. Seriously I’d agree with Jeremy though – nobody could argue with his competitive side and you know it drives him crazy being a back-marker. Thus far he’s driven very cautiously in “learning” mode and only rarely pushed the edge. I bet he wants at least one season where he can push it. Problem for me is every time he seemed to push things last year he ended up facing the wrong direction.
Jimmie didn’t do much of anything in the Xfinity series. He certainly could drive the car Nascar was running at that time in the Cup series. It certainly looks he’s not a natural in Indy cars, so he must be having fun and enjoying the challenge. I’m a JJ fan, but I don’t ever expect him to be a contender in Indy.
Jimmie Johnson, the new Milka Duno of the 2022 Indy Car season.
Except I’d rather have a poster of Milka in my room than Jimmie! lol
LMAO… good one!!!! and agree 100%.