A person walks into an airport, walks as much as the large board titled “Departures,” and with a packed bag at his facet, appears upon the handfuls of cities listed, figuring out that he can board any single a kind of airplanes headed to any vacation spot of his selecting, no questions requested. A golden ticket. A passport to the world. A bucket record. A Genie Plus Lightning Lane with no restrictions. Use no matter metaphor you need. What it’s, is a sense of true freedom.

No, this isn’t about George Clooney within the closing scene of the 2009 Oscar-nominated movie “Up within the Air.” It is about one other good-looking, graying, legend-in-his-own-time who now finds himself standing in entrance of a clean itinerary that he can fill with whichever stops and stations that he has ever desired. However that is not a curler bag in his hand. It is a helmet.

“What I am doing now, it is concerning the expertise,” Jimmie Johnson mentioned Tuesday. “This permits me to open up the runway and offers me extra time to expertise this.”

On Monday, Johnson revealed that he was stepping away from full-time racing after two seasons — one part-time, one full-time — within the IndyCar Collection. However, because the seven-time NASCAR Cup Collection champion preached as he left inventory automotive racing on the finish of 2020, he would not wish to hear the phrase retirement. “I attempted to retire as soon as, and that did not work out,” the 47-year-old joked.

Geez, is he proper about that.

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Since his closing NASCAR begin, a fifth-place end within the Nov. 8, 2020, season finale, he has made 29 IndyCar begins, together with 2022 Indy 500 Rookie of the 12 months honors, and ran one other half-dozen within the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar sequence, beginning with a podium end within the Rolex 24 at Daytona, his third runner-up effort within the race.

However for each race and sequence he has run, there are a minimum of a handful of occasions and race automobiles that he wasn’t in a position to enter or drive due to a full-time IndyCar dedication that he repeatedly confessed this season was greater than he had anticipated.

“Man, I’ve had racing mates from everywhere in the world calling and saying, ‘It is best to come do that sequence I have been operating in’ and it sounds so superior,” Johnson defined one 12 months in the past, laughing. “However then after we hold up, I am Googling that sequence as a result of I’ve by no means even heard of it, and I am like, ‘Oh man, that does look superior!’ The liberty to possibly do this, that is a present. All of us dream of residing a bucket record, however nobody ever will get to really do this.”

Now he does.

He has overtly and giddily described his time within the IndyCar paddock as some of the pleasing of his life. As irritating as his studying curve could possibly be, particularly on street programs, that has been countered by the nice vibes of being part of what has all the time been an uncommonly pleasant cul-de-sac expertise of residing within the IndyCar motorcoach lot.

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“Jimmie might have walked into this paddock together with his résumé pinned to his firesuit and been busy jetting to occasions and that might have been completely comprehensible,” six-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon mentioned of Johnson, his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate, in Might. “However as a substitute, he arrived as this humble, keen man who match proper in and wished to be taught. He was one in every of us in a short time, and that is a testomony to him.”

As is that ringing phone, with alternatives to compile a to-do record of racing that harks again to the old fashioned profession paths of A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti and the hero of each child who grew up like Johnson as a desert rat of Southern California and the Baja Peninsula: Parnelli Jones.

He talks of being uncomfortable and qualifying behind the grid and never successful races, and one way or the other makes it sound superior. Johnson is a person who’s enjoying with home cash and is aware of it. Now he desires to take that clean verify and begin ticking off races and locations.

Together with his choice to finish full-time racing now official, the method of stitching the quilt of his future behind the wheel has began … as quickly as he is finished with this weekend’s Petit Le Mans at Street Atlanta.

“My timing is in a great spot, so we’ll see what the approaching weeks convey.”

Johnson desires to race the 24 Hours of Le Mans, almost unattainable to do if one is operating full time in IndyCar. It simply so occurs that NASCAR has been engaged on a “Storage 56” entry — a slot reserved for an modern automotive that does not need to abide by the competitors’s rules, but additionally just isn’t categorized within the outcomes — for subsequent 12 months’s race and it is being constructed by Hendrick Motorsports, the place Johnson spent twenty years and received all of these Cup Collection titles.

He desires to return to the Indy 500, the place he led two laps earlier than crashing out late, however would additionally prefer to pair that with the Coca-Cola 600 for the Memorial Day Weekend Double, which has solely been tried by 5 racers and none since Kurt Busch did it eight years in the past. He’s nonetheless on nice phrases with Ganassi, who has raced in each sequence with legendary success and helped Tony Stewart do the Double in 2001. He is additionally huge buddies with Justin Marks, who purchased Ganassi’s Cup staff, now Trackhouse Racing, and has created Mission 91, designed particularly to convey huge stars from different disciplines over for one-off runs in a top-shelf NASCAR Cup Collection journey.

And he actually, actually desires extra pictures on the Rolex 24 and the 12 Hours of Sebring. He has been so shut so many occasions at Daytona and completed seventh in his lone Sebring begin in 2021.

Sports activities automobiles in Europe, dust automobiles round the USA, a return to Baja, nothing is off the desk — so long as it is enjoyable and so long as he is in a position to get house to his household as a lot as potential. His two daughters are each in elementary faculty, with the oldest center faculty earlier than later. He glows as a lot if no more when speaking about spouse Chandra’s artwork gallery growth as he does when describing racing at Indy. He speaks of residing in Colorado and Charlotte and possibly someday the Johnson household spending a while residing in Europe. For a child who grew up in a trailer park in El Cajon, California, saying that type of stuff aloud nonetheless appears like a through-the-looking-glass life.

The one dream higher than residing one’s profession bucket record is having the ability to do this whereas additionally experiencing it with one’s household, to not point out being there as they reside their very own goals — say, crushing it at a dance recital.

So, sure, this man, he’s standing in entrance of that “Departures” board, however he isn’t alone. He has his household with him. He’d like for us to journey together with him, too.

“Carvana got here up with this tagline, ‘No End Traces,'” Johnson says of the sponsor who has additionally advised him it would have his again (and be embroidered on his chest) for no matter racing he desires to do subsequent, wherever and each time that is likely to be. “Most individuals wish to imagine that is a actuality and wish to problem themselves and begin a second profession and pivot in life, however that is robust to do. I’ve found these final two years what number of followers and racers establish with what I’ve finished and wish to do this of their lives.”