Accelerated Rate

No Southern California driver has won the Daytona 500. Jimmie Johnson, an off-road racer from El Cajon, would like to become the first.

Johnson stole the spotlight during Speed Weeks at Daytona International Speedway last year when, as a rookie driving for four-time champion Jeff Gordon, he was the fastest qualifier. In the race, inexperience caught up with him and he finished 15th.

Sunday, in his second Daytona 500, Johnson will start 12th, in the sixth row directly behind defending Winston Cup champion Tony Stewart. It’s not where he wants to be.

“From about sixth to 20th, it’s cutthroat,” Johnson said Friday after finishing fourth in his first International Race of Champions event. “Everybody is making moves and doing anything they can to get out of that area because they’re afraid of the ‘big one’ and that is where it’s going to happen.”

In two Winston Cup-related races this week, he has a seventh place in the Budweiser Shootout and a sixth in a twin 125 qualifying race.

“We had the car that could have won either or both races but made mistakes that cost us track position,” he said. “One thing I have learned in a year is that you learn through your mistakes.

“You don’t realize the bad decisions you make until you make them out there and suddenly you’re hung out. Sometimes they aren’t really mistakes. It’s just that there is a lot of energy in that draft. There are a lot of things going on that I have to get used to recognizing before they happen.

“When you’re traveling 200 mph and spending 90% of your time looking in the rearview mirror, it’s really hard to see those things. I think I’ve gotten a lot better, but there is so much to learn.

“It’s like in the draft, where two guys working together can get past the lead driver. But if you’re the guy doing the pushing and the front guy breaks into the lead, you’re left holding the sack, and sliding backwards. You hook up, give hand signals back and forth, but you have to remember that the other guy is doing what it takes for him to move up, not you. If it happens to help both of you, fine, but there’s no worse feeling than helping a guy up through the pack and having him run off and leave you.

“That happened to me in both the Shootout and the 125, and it happened again in IROC. I was leading when guys drafted by me and I got caught in the wrong lane and slid back.”

In the 500, Johnson will be one row ahead of Gordon, his boss and teammate, but as Johnson pointed out, it isn’t always good to draft with a teammate.

“It can help the two of you get out of the middle of the pack, but once you get toward the front, who is going to benefit and who is going to give something up for the other guy?” he said. “You may be teammates, but both of you want to win.”

After 36 races as a rookie, Johnson says the learning process never stops. For instance, the difference between fighting his way out of the pack and racing for the lead. He did both well enough last year to win three races, one of them the California 500 at Fontana, and lead the Winston Cup standings for a week.

“You’ve got to try and learn other drivers’ moves and that takes time and experience,” he said. “The other night, Dale [Earnhardt] Jr. got by me and I watched him set it up for 10 laps. But I didn’t know what he was doing because I hadn’t been in that situation. Sure enough, he passed me, hung me out and I slipped back a couple of spots.”

The learning process for rookies, especially successful ones, is as critical off the track as on.

“You’ve got your team and your guys and, to an extent, your sponsor that needs to be taken care of, but that’s part of racing,” he said. “Outside the race car, the media stuff that we’ve done -- it went up five times. The sponsor obligations -- five times. And the fan aspect of it, the recognition I get, went up at least 10, so it’s been a huge learning experience outside of the race car that I’ve had to learn.”

In last year’s rookie-of-the-year competition, he finished second to Ryan Newman of Roger Penske’s team, even though he finished fifth in points, one spot ahead of his rival.

“I didn’t know Ryan real well at the beginning of the year, but we respected one another and that grew into us getting to know each other better,” Johnson said. “We were the only ones who knew what we were experiencing, so we talked and shared notes.”

Newman won rookie honors because of more poles -- six to four -- more top-five finishes and a stronger run late in the season.

Once the season was over and Johnson had collected his $939,066 fifth-place check at the New York awards ceremony, he and Gordon headed for the Canary Islands, where they teamed with motorcyclist Colin Edwards to win the World Race of Champions team title for the United States. Sweden’s Kenny Brack won the individual championship.

“Things have happened so fast, I can’t believe it was only a few years ago [seven, to be exact] that I was running in the Mickey Thompson Stadium Truck Series back in California and racing around Baja in SCORE’s Trophy Truck series,” he said. He was the youngest driver ever in the Thompson series.

Johnson made his stock-car debut in the 1998 ASA AC Delco Challenge Series, where he was rookie of the year. That led to a ride in the Busch Grand National series, where he started five races in 1999.

He drove three full seasons in Busch, winning in 2001 at Chicagoland Speedway while driving for Herzog Motorsports.

When Gordon decided to build his own team in partnership with Rick Hendrick, he selected Johnson as his driver.

“I can’t imagine making a better choice than Jimmie,” Gordon said. “He’s not only a championship driver but a championship friend.”

When Friday’s practice was over, Johnson had the fastest lap, 190.998 mph, but he downplayed the significance of it.

“You can’t tell much from practice speeds,” he said. “You don’t know who caught a draft or for how long. It can tell you, though, that you’ve got a fast car and I know [crew chief] Chad Knaus will have a fast one for me Sunday.”

Johnson was more intent on getting out of his IROC uniform and away from the track.

“It’s Valentine’s Day and my girlfriend is waiting, so I don’t want to be late,” he said with a big smile. “We’re going to dinner and I got her some flowers.”