Jimmie Johnson's Racing Future Is Uncertain on a Number of Levels

• With just two races left this NTT IndyCar season, the question begs as to where Jimmie Johnson goes from here, or even if he’ll even be back next season.

• Johnson turns 47 years old on Sept. 17, six days after this year’s IndyCar season concludes at Laguna Seca.

• Johnson sits 20th in the IndyCar standings with two races remaining.

In his second season in the NTT IndyCar Series, and the first full campaign competing in all the circuit’s races, Jimmie Johnson has shown some incremental improvement from his rookie year.

But with just two races left this season, the question of where Johnson goes from—if he’ll even be back next season—remains uncertain on a number of levels.

First, the simplest part: Johnson turns 47 years old on Sept. 17, six days after this year’s IndyCar season concludes at Laguna Seca. He remains one of the oldest full-time drivers in the series (Helio Castroneves is 47).

Everything else after that isn’t as easy to understand. The end of the IndyCar season is less than three weeks away, yet team owner Chip Ganassi still hasn’t signed the former seven-time NASCAR Cup champ to a contract extension for 2023 and potentially beyond.

Even Johnson seems a bit surprised that he hasn’t signed a new deal yet.

“We're just still working to put our program together,” Johnson said prior to last weekend’s IndyCar race near St. Louis. “Wish I had some updates. I like to get things done pretty early in a season. I don't know.”

While Johnson has recorded the five highest finishes of his brief IndyCar career during this season—fifth at Iowa2 last month, sixth at Texas in March, 11th at Iowa1 last month, 14th Saturday at St. Louis and 16th last month at Mid-Ohio—it’s unclear whether he’ll come back for a second full season in 2023 or potentially revert back to a part-time slate like he had in 2021 (12 starts in 16 races).

“In my mind, I've been looking more to a full season,” Johnson said. “Certainly that will still be the objective at this point.”

But there’s two other even larger issues that may be in the way of a new deal first.

First, how will the Alex Palou situation—including Ganassi’s current lawsuit against Palou and his management team—end up? If Palou manages to buy himself out of the option year of his deal with CGR in 2023 to race for McLaren, who drives CGR’s No. 10 Honda for primary sponsor NTT Data (which just happens to be the series’ entitlement sponsor)?

And then there’s what may be the biggest issue of all: the status of Carvana, the primary sponsor on Johnson’s No. 48 car.

The stock price of the Tempe, Arizona-headquartered company has plummeted in the last year, dropping roughly 90 percent in value from its all-time high of $370.10 per share on August 10, 2021, to Monday’s closing price of $35.96.

With those kinds of losses, can Carvana still afford another year of a high-dollar IndyCar sponsorship program—reported this season to be worth $10 million, per Sports Business Journal—going forward next season? To be fair, Carvana did not announce its full-season sponsorship of Johnson until Dec. 15, 2021.

When Autoweek reached out to both Johnson’s representatives, as well as Chip Ganassi Racing on Monday, the only response we received was a statement from the team: “We don’t currently have any announcements or updates planned but will be sure to let you know as soon as we do.”

Johnson sits 20th in the IndyCar standings with two races remaining: Sept. 4 at Portland and the season finale Sept. 11 at Laguna Seca. That’s an improvement in the standings from his finish last season (26th, although he competed in just 12 of the year’s 16 races).

Johnson has totally immersed himself into the IndyCar world and experience, even surprisingly taking a shot at his former racing series.

“The thing that I really appreciate about the IndyCar Series and the culture here, people within the sport, its promoters, drivers, teams, everybody generally wants to grow the sport and is putting everything that they can in to grow it,” Johnson said. “I didn't feel like my last few years in NASCAR was that way.

“I felt like there was a lot of finger pointing, not participating in helping grow the sport, more rock throwing than anything, pointing fingers at who is doing it wrong. Here it feels like everybody is trying to grow the sport and do it right.”

Follow Autoweek contributor Jerry Bonkowski on Twitter @JerryBonkowski