Danny “Chocolate” Myers, a longtime employee of RCR and a crew member during all six of Earnhardt’s championships with Childress, feels an eighth championship may be difficult for anyone to reach.
“I personally think the odds are against anyone winning seven championships again, which means no eighth title,” Myers said. “The reason I say that is because a driver may spend half of his career trying to win one championship during this day and time. Also, the way the championship is set up today, it’s always going to come down to the last race.
“We all had Harvick and Denny Hamlin penciled in early in the 2020 season as championship favorites and neither of them won it,” Myers continued. “We saw what happened to Kevin when he missed the final four championship drivers by one point after winning nine races throughout the season. It could happen, but I think it’s going to be extremely hard for any driver to get to eight championships the way the points and playoff system is set up now.”
Johnson, former driver of the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet and his longtime crew chief Chad Knaus, logged their first Cup Series championship in 2006 and remained on top through 2010 to become the first to record five consecutive titles.
Two more championships came in 2013 and ’16, putting Johnson alongside Petty and Earnhardt in the history books. As Johnson collected his seventh and final championship for Hendrick Motorsports in 2016, the El Cajun, Calif., native set out to become the only driver to win eight Cup Series titles.
But he came up short in three consecutive years and Johnson ran his final season in 2020 under the direction of crew chief Cliff Daniels.
Knaus cites a season-long strategy for putting a team in championship contention is to concentrate on winning early and learning from every race.
“Obviously, to win a championship is difficult. You can’t write the script,” Knaus said. “That’s especially true with the format we are dealing with now with the playoffs. The ideal situation would be to come out quickly and win a race if you can. That solidifies you in the playoffs. At that point, you can kind of take the approach of, ‘OK, these are going to be the key tracks that we’ll focus on to try and gain knowledge for the playoffs.’ Once we got established into the playoffs, at that point, that’s all we focused on. Learning what we are trying to learn is the focus. Not that you’re throwing those races away but that’s really all the goal is.”
Knaus offered many reasons why the eighth title has been difficult to reach.
“We didn’t know the eighth one was going to be so tough until we got to seven,” Knaus said. “There were a lot of contributing factors, one being time. Everybody was operating on a limited amount of time and talent. Everyone slows down to some level at some time, whether that’s the crew chief or pit crew or driver.
“You can’t run at the pace that you need to do to stay competitive and stay relevant,” he added. “In order to win a championship, it’s all about timing. It’s got to be the right race track. It’s got to be the right driver. The driver has to be in the right mindset. The team has to be operating at a very high level. There are just so many contributing factors.
“Honestly, winning seven championships is a huge deal for me personally. It’s something that I had not anticipated Jimmie and I would do. We joked about it lightly from the very beginning (in 2001) but we did have a goal from the very, very beginning to win eight championships. We said that early and used that as a fall back I think to get us through the pursuit of seven.
“Basically, we were going for eight championships. We were going through one and two and we were fortunate enough to get three, four and five. For the sixth and seventh, we maybe downplayed those keeping the focus on trying to get to eight.
“For me, they were awesome. I loved every one of them. They are all unique. It’s a pretty cool feat.”