This article appears in the September 21 issue of ESPN The Magazine.
Along the southern rim of uptown Charlotte, the NASCAR Hall of Fame's chrome, oval edifice is taking shape. But the Hall has one problem: If NASCAR really wants to induct its best drivers in the first class, in May 2010, the league must waive its "10 years of service, three years retired" eligibility requirements. Then we could all agree on the top four: Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon, with David Pearson not too far behind. But the fifth -- with apologies to Darrell Waltrip, Cale Yarborough and Bobby Allison -- has yet to put in 10 years and might not retire for another 10. So now is the time to recognize Jimmie Johnson for what he is: one of the greatest, if not the greatest, ever to flick a starter switch.
"The Hall of Fame?" Johnson ponders the notion as he sits in a folding chair tucked away in a corner of the Hendrick Motorsports race shop, staring through the floor beneath his feet. "If I was ever fortunate enough to be a Hall of Famer -- " Wait -- if? Johnson is interrupted to have his own résumé read to him. He's second only to Gordon among active full-time drivers in wins (43), Cups (three) and earnings ($80 million). No one has had a more dominant start to a career: Since 2002, his rookie season, he has led every major statistical category, and he enters the 2009 Chase for the Sprint Cup with a chance at NASCAR's first four-peat. Johnson just shakes his head. "I wanted to win a race," he says. "As in one. I guess I snuck up on people. Hell, I snuck up on me. Still do."
Can a sport really underestimate a three-time defending champ? We took a paddock straw poll of 25 drivers, mechanics, owners and media to rank the field across a variety of racing categories. Where Johnson ended up, almost always behind someone else, proved to be a surprise -- especially to Johnson. But in the end, even though the individual results got under his skin, they all add up to one thing: It's time to give JJ a Hall pass.
The Bullring Kings
ESPN The Magazine poll ranking order: (1) Kurt Busch; (2) Jeff Gordon; (3) Kyle Busch; (4) Tony Stewart; (5) Jimmie Johnson.
Here we are, just one category in, and already perception beats reality. The Busch brothers have taken their turns as the Kings of Bristol, and Gordon owns 15 short-track victories. But since 2002, Johnson has nine bullring wins to Kurt Busch's seven, Gordon's six and Kyle Busch's four; Stewart has just two. Although there's only one true short track on this year's Chase schedule, Martinsville on Oct. 25, care to guess which one Johnson likes best? "I have had a lot of success at Martinsville [five wins] and Richmond [three]," he says. "But Bristol is higher profile, and I haven't won there yet. Kurt and Kyle have dominated there, so has Jeff, but we've struggled. Maybe that's where the perception comes from."
To see more of the poll results from NASCAR insiders about where Jimmie Johnson and other current drivers rank -- as well as in a historical context -- you must be an ESPN Insider. 
The Plate Cleaners
ESPN The Magazine poll ranking order: (1) Dale Earnhardt Jr; (2) Tony Stewart; (3) Jeff Gordon; (4) Kurt Busch; (5) Jimmie Johnson.
Yes, success at the restrictor-plate tracks of Daytona and Talladega, where choked-down engines create stifling 20-car packs, depends as much on luck as on being a good wheelman. "Yeah, yeah," three-time Cup champ Darrell Waltrip chirps mockingly. "But the good ones still find their way to the front, don't they?" When Johnson was getting his first taste of plates, Earnhardt was in the middle of a historic run of seven restrictor-plate wins between 2001 and 2004. But in the five years since Junior's last superspeedway triumph, Johnson holds the edge in plate top 10s, with nine to Junior's eight. "Restrictor-plate races were a big hole in my strengths when I came to Cup," Johnson says. "We made up that ground on Junior, and then some. Still, we have only two plate wins, one at each track." If he earns another at Talladega (the Chase's seventh race, Nov. 1), it won't just be dumb luck.
The Road Warriors
ESPN The Magazine poll ranking order: (1) Tony Stewart; (2) Juan Pablo Montoya; (3) Jeff Gordon; (4) Marcos Ambrose; (5) Robby Gordon.
In the increasingly futile task of trying to find flaws in Johnson's game, one argument rings loudest: his oh-fer on road courses. "If there's a disappointment in my career, it's that I haven't won on a road course," he says. "My background wasn't oval racing, it was off-road and motorcycles. So to have so much success on short tracks and not on road courses -- there's no bigger fact that tells you how unexpected all of this has been." Still, with seven top-10 road finishes since 2002, he trails only Stewart (12) and Newman (eight) and is tied with Jeff Gordon.
The Quality Qualifiers
ESPN The Magazine poll ranking order: (1) Ryan Newman; (2) Jeff Gordon; (3) Kasey Kahne; (4) Brian Vickers; (5) Jimmie Johnson.
No one took much notice of Johnson before his rookie run; they were too busy gushing over fellow frosh Newman. Most of that was due to the Rocket Man's banzai laps on qualifying day. "Ryan took my sponsor from the Busch Series [Alltel], and I think he won the pole for his third race. Our rookie year, I won four poles and he won six. The next year he won nearly twice that many -- and he just keeps doing it." Johnson isn't far behind. Since 2002, his average start over 276 races is 10.975, third behind Newman (10.613) and Gordon (10.825). His 20 poles also puts him third, behind Newman's 43 and Gordon's 28.
The Crew Communicators
ESPN The Magazine poll ranking order: (1) Jeff Burton; (2) Kurt Busch; (3) Jimmie Johnson; (4) Ryan Newman; (5) Tony Stewart.
"I am seriously starting to wonder who you talked to for these polls," says Johnson's spotter, Earl Barban, part of the 48 team's triangle of communication, along with Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus. During a race, they keep their radio frequency burning with data that can be gathered only with eyeballs and the feeling in the seat of a driver's pants. Johnson must explain those vibes to Knaus as mechanical adjustments; any misinterpretation, down to a fraction of an inch or a half pound of air pressure, can lead to disaster. "Rusty Wallace was the best ever at knowing exactly what he needed in a car," says Barban, who spotted for Wallace, the 1989 Cup champ, for nearly a decade. "But Jimmie is every bit as good. It's amazing to hear him click in and calmly ask for something when he's going three-wide at 190 mph." Skeptics claim that Johnson's career will slide when Knaus inevitably leaves to run his own team, much as Gordon's did when Ray Evernham left, in 1999. Knaus' response? "I'd like to think that," he jokes. "But no one's asked me to drive the race car yet."
The Chart Climbers
ESPN The Magazine poll ranking order: (1) Matt Kenseth; (2) Jimmie Johnson; (3) Jeff Gordon; (4) Tony Stewart; (5) Clint Bowyer.
"Seriously?" Knaus says with more than a little irritation at the news that JJ finished second when it comes to salvaging a bad day. "Maybe we need to start qualifying badly." As usual, NASCAR's undisputed top crew chief has analyzed the situation perfectly. Most of those polled gave credit to Kenseth, a famously bad qualifier, for converting poor starting positions into top-10 finishes. But no one can turn a bad car into a good one on the fly like Johnson and Knaus. On Aug. 3 at Pocono, the 48 car fell three laps down and NASCAR threatened to park it for safety reasons. The team changed out the entire top half of the engine, climbed back onto the lead lap and finished 13th. "I don't have a lot of wins that I'm more proud of than that 13th-place finish," Johnson says. "That sent a message to the garage: You can't quit, because we haven't."
The Car Controllers
ESPN The Magazine poll ranking order: (1) Tony Stewart; (2) Jeff Gordon; (3) Kasey Kahne; (4) Jimmie Johnson; (5) Ryan Newman.
"Car control," says Cale Yarborough, NASCAR's only other three-peat Cup champ, "is the ability to wreck a car five times during a race without actually wrecking it." And the best car controllers are the ones who grew up in the dirt, particularly in sprint cars. That explains why Johnson is joined in our poll by four USAC champs. But they raced in sandboxes compared with Johnson's old stomping grounds. "We come from desert racing," says Casey Mears, who's been friends with Johnson since they raced each other as kids in Southern California. "You want to learn car control? Try running through a Mexican desert canyon at night that's full of boulders, washes and rivers. The rear end breaking loose at Chicagoland Speedway feels like nothing to Jimmie." Over the past four seasons -- 132 races -- Johnson has crashed only six times, and half of them were the result of a "Big One" at Talladega or Daytona.
The Fearless Fliers
ESPN The Magazine poll ranking order: (1) Carl Edwards; (2) Kyle Busch; (3) Tony Stewart; (4) Jimmie Johnson; (5) Greg Biffle.
Even the champ is willing to concede the top spot here. "You saw Kansas last year, right?" Johnson asks, referring to his last-lap duel for the win with Edwards at the track that hosts the Chase's fifth stop. Edwards dive-bombed into the lead with a high-low pass in which he purposely took Turn 3 too fast and then intentionally ricocheted off the wall to maintain speed. "That was the coolest and scariest thing I've seen in a race car," Johnson says. "He went flying across my nose and into the lead, and I was like, That's so awesome!" Yeah, but Jimmie, who won the race? "Oh, we did."
The Media Darlings
ESPN The Magazine poll ranking order: (1) Jeff Gordon; (2) Jeff Burton; (3) Jimmie Johnson; (4) Carl Edwards; (5) Dale Earnhardt Jr.
"There's a fine line you have to walk when it comes to speaking your mind," Johnson admits. "You're representing corporate sponsors, and you sure can't run your mouth if you've never done anything on the racetrack. But as you build some clout, you can walk that line with a little more confidence. Jeff Gordon is the master at that. Both Jeffs are." There are plenty of fans and media folks who like to write Johnson off as a whitewashed, sound bite drone. But anyone who really talks to the guy knows differently. "Jimmie is funny, smart, and he's got the right mix of pitchman and garage leader," Gordon says before he starts to chuckle. "Maybe you don't hear that much out of him because he's too busy beating up on all of us."
The Killer Closers
ESPN The Magazine poll ranking order: (1) Jimmie Johnson; (2) Tony Stewart; (3) Jeff Gordon; (4) Carl Edwards; (5) Kyle Busch.
Old-timers call it "smelling money," being up front when it counts -- right before they hand out the trophies and the cash. "Jimmie's numbers make you wanna get your eyes checked," says Waltrip. "Look who he's ahead of on the career-wins list -- Stewart, Mark Martin, Fireball Roberts -- and Jimmie is, what, 33 years old? I was 34 when I won my first championship. He's just getting started." Other drivers may stand out for various skills, but Johnson outshines them for one big reason. "Come here," says Junior Johnson (no relation) as he reaches out to snatch away the top-five lists. "Where's the part where you add all this mess up?" The Last American Hero, who won 50 races as a driver and 119 as an owner, looks through his reading glasses and spots the final item. "Right there," he says with a thump of the paper. "Killer Instinct. That's the only part that Jimmie's gonna care about. The guys he races may not think he's the best at this or that, but add it all up. With five laps to go, who do they not want to see in their mirrors? Jimmie Johnson. They might not admit it, but it's been that way for years. And that's the difference between being a good racer and being an all-time great."
Ryan McGee is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. You can find his online archives here.