3/1/2023 0 Comments Star pupil![]() ![]() Seeing where he’s come from and where he’s at now continuing to go, there’s some big gains up ahead for him. ![]() And I know it did a lot for his confidence. “You look at the guys that he not only caught and passed at Laguna, but some of it was pretty dramatic. I mean, look, when I joined the program at Detroit, oh my gosh, we’re barely holding onto the back of the field. “When we can do that, we can race further up the grid, and I believe with what he’s doing to learn and improve, it will come. “You know, we’ve still got to work on qualifying, being able to really rip that one lap off and put all the segments together to get everything out of that car that we can,” Pruett continued. In spite of the massive learning curve he’s scaled, a long list of improvements await Johnson this weekend in Long Beach and again next season when he returns without his rookie stripes. With the visions of Bambi quickly fading, Pruett is also fast to temper the belief that Johnson’s ready to take down the Colton Hertas and Josef Newgardens in the series. And by far, what you saw happen at Laguna was just really damn impressive.” It’s been starting over with Jimmie, brand-new guy to this type of racing, and helping him to belong out there, almost overnight. This was never about making a Cup driver into an Ind圜ar driver. “He’s the guy that is putting in the work and, and there’s a lot of people like myself and Eric Cowdin, his engineer, and the whole organization trying to give him 110 percent so that he can, really, in only one year, become a totally new driver. This is just that next level of what we’re continually seeing from him - his abilities are real. “We saw glimpses of it at the last Indy race on the road course where he was solid, and again, solid race at Portland. “Being there on the inside, watching him grow leaps and bounds, I’ve seen this coming,” Pruett (pictured at right, above, with Johnson) told RACER. Scott Pruett - his mentor and driving coach at CGR - isn’t prone to saying flowery things about those who aren’t deserving of praise, but in the case of his star pupil, the veteran of Ind圜ar, NASCAR, and sports cars says it’s time to acknowledge the presence of a new open-wheel racer. WeatherTech Laguna Seca looked and felt a turning point for Johnson. And at various points in the 95-lap contest, he was giving 2020 race winner Felix Rosenqvist the business and matching the pace of ex-Formula 1 driver Max Chilton, both of whom finished behind the No. Directly in front of Johnson at the checkered flag was Conor Daly, a supremely talented road racer. While being happy with a 17th might stand out as odd in an Ind圜ar event with 27 cars in the field, Johnson chased and raced with a deeper talent pool than we’ve seen for most of the season.īehind the 46-year-old was 21-year-old phenom Rinus VeeKay, a winner earlier in the year on the Indianapolis road course. What’s happened in recent rounds has been a testament to Johnson’s growth as an Ind圜ar driver, and if you caught Sunday’s race in Monterey, confidence and aggression were on regular display as his best performance of the year was produced with a combative run to 17th place. 48 Honda, it was the vast absence of knowledge with high-downforce and high-grip Indy cars, and their knife-edge handling tendencies, that made the seven-time NASCAR Cup champion look like Bambi learning to walk on ice. He’d spent decades mastering the art of herding stock cars around ovals, but all that experience was useless while transitioning to a new and unfamiliar world with Chip Ganassi Racing.ĭuring those formative stages of the 2021 season in the No. Spins, mistakes, and session stoppages were becoming the norm for the open-wheel neophyte. For more than half of his rookie Ind圜ar season, Jimmie Johnson was the leading cause of groans and anxious moments among his rivals. ![]()
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