Have you ever stopped to ponder we are in the midst of greatness, that we are blessed to live in a time and a place where we can watch, perhaps, the best driver in NASCAR history ply his trade week in, week out?  That's where I think we're at with Jimmie Johnson.  In an era where there are more potential winners taking the green flag, the 7-time champion towers above the competition, the tallest of the redwoods in stock car racing's elite forest.

Last Sunday at Dover, Johnson grabbed his 83rd Monster Energy Cup Series checkered flag, tying him for sixth on the all-time win list. The next victory will move him into a tie for fourth with Darrell Waltrip and Bobby Allison. Ten more and he'll tie Jeff Gordon and Johnson's within 22 of catching David Pearson, who sits second with 105 wins.   He can't catch Richard Petty at 200, but the others I do believe will bite the dust.

At age 41, JJ shows no signs of letting up and reminds me a lot of Bobby Allison, who between the ages of 44 and 46 went to victory lane 16 times and captured his last checkered flag when he was 50-years-old. Bobby never lost the will to compete and Johnson seems to enjoy the battle even more now than he did at the beginning of his career.

The other similarity is they both were committed to staying in shape, although Bobby went about that a different way.  If you had asked him to run a hundred yards he probably wouldn't have made it without throwing up, but he when wasn't in a Cup car "B.A." ran three or four short track races a week in anything and everything with a steering wheel. Bobby didn't pump iron, yet he was in rock hard racing shape. Johnson, on the other hand, is a fitness freak who pedals hundreds of miles each week on his bike, lifts weights, and follows a diet plan so he's digging as hard on the last lap as he is the first one.

Now, it's taken Johnson 556 starts to get to 83 wins, averaging a checkered flag about every seven starts. I'm figuring a minimum of three more victories this year and at least five in the ensuing four seasons. Doing the math, it adds up to 106 trips to victory lane by the end of the 2021 season when Johnson will be age 45.

I believe this will happen not because Johnson is a great driver or has a great owner in Rick Hendrick, or a great crew chief in Chad Knaus. The real reason it will happen is because this trio remains hungry for more success and they thirst for more records. After their 11th win at Dover, Knaus explained why Johnson will claw his way to new heights. "We come to the race track to try to win everything that we possibly can," he said.  "We want to win practice and we want to sit on the pole for qualifying.  We want to win every stage and we want to win the race. So, if there's a checkered flag to be had the 48 is going to the race track to try and capture it."

Johnson is a juggernaut trampling through the history books in a way we're not likely to see again. You haters and Twitter trolls ought to just sit back and, like the rest of us, enjoy the experience and be able to tell your grandchildren you got to watch what many believe is NASCAR's GOAT - GreatestOfAllTime.

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In finishing 10th at Dover Danica Patrick scored her first top-10 since Bristol April 2015, which is a span of 77 races.

As the runner-up on the Monster Mile Kyle Larson has now finished in second place five times in 2017. Adding his win at Fontana that means the driver of the Target Chevrolet has finished top-two in six of the opening 13 races or nearly 50% of the time.

Chase Elliott came home fifth at Dover after averaging a 30th place finish in the four previous races heading into last Sunday's AAA 400.