Mammoth Blog

Next time you're having lunch in SoHo or dinner in Union Square, take a closer look at the people to your left and right.

One of them just might be NASCAR's three-time defending champion.

Jimmie Johnson is from Southern California and makes his full-time home these days in Charlotte, but he told Newsday last week that he keeps an apartment in New York City for a very special reason: To get away from being Jimmie Johnson, the superstar race car driver.

In the racing world he is the equivalent of Michael Jordan, Derek Jeter or Tom Brady, but among the masses walking the New York City streets he can just be Jimmie.

"It's a place I'll come up to, shut my phone off, dodge e-mails, and just fall into the city," Johnson said. "We'll meet with friends and have some good food, good wine, and just get away from the racing thing."

And, to some degree, Johnson credits these in-season mini-getaways to New York City as one of the many reasons why he has become the best driver going.

Sometimes the hardest thing for a professional athlete to do is to let go, to step away from everything for a day or two. But Johnson said he realized a few years back that in order to remain sharp during the nine-month NASCAR season, he had to force himself to tune everything out every now and again.

"It's such a long season that you need to take breaks and recharge your battery throughout the year," Johnson said. "Nobody can go through the whole season without doing that."

So what does he and his wife, Chandra, do in New York City?

"For me it's all about long lunches and long dinners," Johnson said. "We seem to gravitate to the West Village, to SoHo, kind of Union Square, the Lower area. Really anywhere we can round up some friends, and get together for some drinks and some food, that's the way I enjoy New York."

He used to drive his scooter around the city streets. "It was quite adventurous, to say the least," he said. But alas, his new place doesn't have any parking, and his wife wasn't a fan of riding on the back of the scooter while in New York City traffic. "I loved it," he said. "She hated it."

Johnson's whirlwind tour after winning his third straight title -- which had been done only once before in NASCAR history -- is beginning to slow. He's booked all through this week for commercial and photo shoots, but after that he's got two weeks to himself before really looking ahead to 2009.

But at the same time, he can't help but think ahead to the potential of making history. "I've not been one who is motivated by stats and numbers," he said, "but that desire is growing now that I can see where I'm fitting into the sport."

Although his immediate goal is to win a record-breaking fourth straight title in 2009, he's also looking a little further down the road, too.

"I'd love to go for eight," he said. "Nobody's done eight.

"Is it realistic? I have no clue.

"But if we're going to dream, let's dream big. source>>>