Johnson aims for 4th overall, 3rd consecutive Brickyard win

Jimmie Johnson seems to be always hanging around, waiting to take advantage of another driver’s miscue to take the lead — and the race.

During last year’s Brickyard 400, Johnson took advantage of NASCAR flagging Juan Pablo Montoya for speeding on pit road, not once, but twice.

Montoya responded angrily, as he essentially had the race in the bag with only 26 laps left of 160, before NASCAR came down on him.

“If they do this to me, I’m going to kill them,” Montoya said on his radio. “There’s no way. I was on the green (dash light).

“Thank you, NASCAR, for screwing my day. We had it in the bag, and they screwed us because I was not speeding. I swear on my children and my wife.”

The speed limit on pit road is 55 mph, with NASCAR giving the drivers 5 mph leeway. Montoya posted speeds of 60.06 mph and 60.11 mph throughout pit road.

However cruel the penalty on Montoya might have seemed, it gave way for Johnson to jump into the lead and to his second consecutive victory.

During the 2008 competition, a race riddled with pit stops because of poor tires, Johnson propelled himself to victory when his team performed an outstandingly fast pit stop, and other drivers, including Hendricks teammate Jeff Gordon, fell by the wayside with much slower pit stops.

This year Johnson will be a marked man, and drivers want to see anyone but Johnson kissing the bricks after Sunday’s race.

“When somebody has a problem, boom, they’re there to win,” fellow driver Kurt Busch said at a race in New Hampshire. “They’re always putting themselves in position to win.”

And it’s not just Johnson, who has won three of the last four Brickyard races, dominating at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Fellow teammate Gordon has won four times, including the inaugural race in 1994.

Johnson seems to be the favorite with the public, as well as the driver the others will be gunning for.

“They’ve won (the Sprint Cup series title) the last four years, and they should be the favorites to win it right now until somebody can knock them off,” Sprint Cup points leader Kevin Harvick said.

If no other driver can manage to beat Johnson this weekend, he will be driving himself into a very distinguished group: four-time winners at the Indy oval. Johnson would join Gordon, as well as three famed Indianapolis 500 drivers, A.J. Foyt, Al Unser and Rick Mears as the only four-time victors.

Johnson’s chance to be immortalized in Indy history has him very excited.

“It would be a huge honor to join the list of four-time winners,” he said. “Just to win there once is a career-maker for anyone, so to have three victories there means a lot to me.”