Jimmie Johnson has three races left in his NASCAR Cup Series career.
The seven-time Cup champion said Saturday that the 2027 Daytona 500 would be his final race in NASCAR’s top series. Johnson is competing in this season’s Daytona 500 on Sunday and will also race in the inaugural San Diego road course race this summer.
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Johnson will assuredly get a NASCAR provisional to race in next season’s Daytona 500 again. NASCAR granted Johnson a provisional for the 2026 race under a rule implemented a season ago that gives the sanctioning body the right to add a spot to the starting grid for a notable driver. The rule was put in place as Helio Castroneves, the former IndyCar driver who attempted the 2025 Daytona 500 for the first time.
Sunday’s race will be the 701st Cup Series start of Johnson’s career. He hit No. 700 in the Coca-Cola 600 last May, but crashed out of the race after completing just 111 of 400 laps.
Johnson retired from the Cup Series at the end of the 2020 season but has returned to run part-time schedules in each of the past three seasons as he’s now a co-owner of Legacy Motor Club. The Toyota team is the former Richard Petty Motorsports and fields full-time entries for Erik Jones and John Hunter Nemechek. Legacy is expanding to three full-time cars in 2027, and Johnson will drive a fourth car in the Daytona 500.
Johnson was the dominant driver of the 2000s in the Cup Series. He won five straight championships from 2006 through 2010 before winning titles in 2013 and 2016. Johnson won 35 races during his five-season championship streak and didn’t have fewer than 22 top-10 finishes in any of those five seasons.
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He’s one of three drivers — along with Petty and Dale Earnhardt — to win seven Cup Series titles. Johnson’s 83 Cup Series victories are sixth all-time as he’s tied with Cale Yarborough. Only Petty, David Pearson, Jeff Gordon, Bobby Allison and Darrell Waltrip have more.
