Jimmie Johnson Can’t Be Bothered by Talk of Hexes at BetLM

Jimmie Johnson Can’t Be Bothered by Talk of Hexes

By JENNA FRYER, Auto Rac­ing Writer

CHARLOTTE, N.C. —Jim­mie John­son doesn’t go in for super­sti­tions or curses or hexes.

The five-time defend­ing NASCAR cham­pion now enters black-cat ter­ri­tory. He’s on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

The mag­a­zine goes on sale Wednes­day and it’s the sec­ond time he’s on the cover—the other in 2008 after his third title. This is only the 10th time the mag­a­zine has fea­tured NASCAR nation­ally on the front of the mag­a­zine. Bill Elliott was the first NASCAR dri­ver on the cover in 1985.

John­son, going for a sixth con­sec­u­tive title, said Tues­day he was unaware of the so-called SI cover jinx.

“There’s noth­ing to worry about. If I lose the cham­pi­onship it has noth­ing to do with being on the cover of a mag­a­zine,” he said at the NASCAR Hall of Fame. “It would mean we didn’t do our jobs, or we had some bad luck and didn’t win a race. It’s no con­cern. I didn’t real­ize there was a curse. I thought it was being on the cover of a video game, that was the curse.”

Leg­end has it that bad luck fol­lows ath­letes and teams fea­tured on the cover. Braves third base­man Eddie Math­ews was widely con­sid­ered to be the first per­son affected by the jinx after his 1954 cover in the debut year of SI. He broke his hand after­ward and missed seven games.

More recent exam­ples: Olympic gold medal hope­ful Lind­sey Vonn injur­ing her leg the same week she was on the cover in 2010; Chicago Bears quar­ter­back Jay Cut­ler injur­ing his knee and the Bears los­ing to Green Bay after Cut­ler was on the cover before January’s NFC cham­pi­onship game. Last month, the Buf­falo Bills were fea­tured region­ally for the first time since 2003 and promptly lost to Cincinnati.

John­son has always believed he’s in charge of his fate and isn’t super­sti­tious beyond admit­tedly fix­at­ing on his car No. 48 when set­ting alarms.

“I was (super­sti­tious) early in my career and over time noth­ing ever, ever really made a dif­fer­ence and I quickly aborted,” he said. “I just don’t think it changes the setup of the car or makes any­thing work any bet­ter, you know?”

John­son won Sun­day at Kansas to move to third in the stand­ings. He trails leader Carl Edwards by four points with six races remain­ing in the Chase for the Sprint Cup cham­pi­onship. Although he took delight last week­end on Twit­ter over a for­tune cookie he opened at Kansas—the paper inside promised rewards for hard work within the month—he insisted Tues­day he didn’t put much faith in the words.

And he’s hes­i­tant to look too far ahead in his bid to win another title.

He was writ­ten off two weeks ago, after an 18th-place run at New Hamp­shire dropped him to 10th in the stand­ings. Although he was only 29 points off the lead, many were quick to pre­dict John­son couldn’t climb out of that hole and retain his title.

Then he fin­ished sec­ond at Dover to move up five spots in the stand­ings. The win at Kansas raised him another two spots, putting him right back in the hunt.

John­son said he’s proof that nobody has any idea who will win the title.

“I just hope peo­ple under­stand and use me as an exam­ple to not jump too quickly on any dri­ver mov­ing for­ward,” John­son said. “There’s just a lot of rac­ing left. There’s six races left, and this cham­pi­onship is still wide open for any­one to get.”

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• Jack­son Won’t Talk to Reporters About Not Talk­ing on Sideline
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