DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - It shouldn’t have taken four consecutive championships for Jimmie Johnson to feel so self-assured and at home, but with the countdown to the Daytona 500 ticking like a time bomb, that’s the way it seems.

Nothing seems to bother the champ. Not a wife expecting the couple’s first child. Not what, to Johnson, has become the unremitting, year after year, pressure of winning another championship.

If a vote were taken, giving Johnson a break would win in a landslide, but the champ’s psyche has never been more conducive to winning. He’s a Southern Californian by birth and persuasion and fits the popular stereotype in that he seldom seems angry, overburdened or vindictive. A perfectionist obviously resides beneath the laidback façade but seldom emerges.

When Johnson talks about motivation, what he says seems almost inexplicable. He talks of himself as if he were someone else.

"I use fear to motivate myself," he said. "I’m entering this year saying ‘we’re going to get beat’ in my mind. That way I work as hard as can, the team works as hard as they can. We don’t leave a stone unturned."

Fear? Afraid? Johnson? C’mon. He looks as if a grizzly bear could pin him to a tree trunk and he’d say, "Dude, like, if it means that much to you …"

But, with a straight face, he says, "I motivate myself that way. I always have. I’ve always used fear to motivate myself in making mistakes, forgetting how to drive a race car. It’s crazy."

Yes. It is.

"I typically start the season with nerves. Am I going to remember how to do this? You know, I really, really do. It sounds crazy, but I’m not nervous for here. I know the night before I go to California (race after the Daytona 500), I’m not going to sleep well. I haven’t for the last eight years. Especially the first year, because I really didn’t know what the hell I was doing."

For sure, that has changed. He wouldn’t seem any more relaxed in a rocking chair or a porch swing than when he’s wandering around in a garage area or down pit road.

Motivated by fear? Those are all the other guys.

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