Gluck: With Jimmie Johnson’s NASCAR legacy secure, anything else is a bonus

Jimmie Johnson is about to embark on a journey into new territory. After Johnson is enshrined in the NASCAR Hall of Fame on Friday night, he will become the first active Hall of Famer to race in the Cup Series.

Days before his induction ceremony, the Legacy Motor Club team he co-owns announced an expanded schedule for 2024. Johnson will now do nine Cup Series races — a quarter of the season — including some of NASCAR’s most prestigious events. The Daytona 500. The Brickyard 400. The Coca-Cola 600. The championship race at Phoenix.

None of the other Hall of Famers have raced in Cup after their selection. Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been the closest to that so far, running one or two Xfinity Series races each year since his induction.

Leave it to Johnson. The former driver of the No. 48 is now 48 years old, but he still has plenty of competitive drive. Johnson showed that by embarking on a longshot attempt at success in IndyCar — a valiant, but ultimately failed effort (four top-15 finishes in 29 starts) — after going winless in his final three Cup Series seasons.

Johnson then made three Cup starts last season — Daytona, Austin and Charlotte — but crashed in all of them and didn’t finish any of the races. Oddly, Johnson has now finished 30th or worse in six of his last seven Cup starts (dating back to his final full season in 2020).

If his lack of results continues this season in the No. 84 car, with Johnson now driving a Toyota, it’s likely you’ll hear some people start to claim Johnson is hurting his legacy.

Do not listen to them. Not for a second. You may recall there was much hand-wringing during the time when Richard Petty and Darrell Waltrip went winless for their final eight seasons in the NASCAR Cup Series. Perhaps they stayed too long past their prime, racing into their early 50s.

Did it hurt their legacies? You can understand why people may have felt that way in the moment. But we now have the benefit of taking a step back to see how careers are viewed, so we know better.

Last year, Petty was voted as the No. 1 NASCAR driver of all time by a panel of industry experts assembled by The Athletic (Johnson was No. 2, by the way). Waltrip was ranked No. 8. Clearly, no one held those final winless seasons against them.

Ultimately, NASCAR careers are viewed not by the few years where the cars weren’t fast enough or when a driver inevitably declined in the seasons after a Hall of Fame resume had already been built. It’s about championships and races won, plus the impact on stock car racing overall.

Johnson, lest anyone forget, was easily the best of his era. That is unquestioned and undisputed by the statistics:

• During Johnson’s full-time career from 2002-2020, his 83 wins represent 26 more victories than the next-closest driver…