Two-time Cup champ Johnson among '08 entrants

Where his participation in the Rolex 24 was "more for fun" in prior years, Jimmie Johnson has first-place ambitions in 2008. Icon SMI

Jimmie Johnson's first sports car race was the Rolex 24 at Daytona in 2004. The classic endurance run had been something he'd wanted to try for the pure enjoyment of it. He came back the next season, finished second and figured he'd gotten it out of his system.

The Sprint Cup star watched the 24-hour race on television in 2006 while close friend Casey Mears was a co-driver on Chip Ganassi Racing's winning team. It became an epiphany for Johnson: Just driving in the 24 Hour wasn't good enough any more.

"The first two years, it was more for fun," Johnson said. "Then I took a year off and I watched Casey Mears, a great friend of mine, win and I watched the event on television. I said, 'You know, I finished second in this thing and I've got to work hard to find a ride that I can do down there and have a chance of winning with."

Johnson has succeeded in that ambition, joining Bob Stallings' Gainsco Racing for next weekend's event. He'll co-drive with Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty, the 2007 Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car champions, and semi-retired Champ Car driver Jimmy Vasser, the 1996 CART champion.

Gurney and Fogarty won seven races last season. They started from the pole at Daytona in 2007, but contact with another car that hit the outside wall and rammed into their Pontiac-powered Riley took them out of contention.

Johnson likewise didn't have much luck at Daytona last year, finishing 36th in a trouble-filled run with the Riley-Mathews team.

"I'm here strictly to win," Johnson said. "I will have fun during the event and all that but this team is a championship-winning team, a race-winning team and we're here to win the race. Being a lineup with guys like this, it's really a dream come true to come down here and compete and be a favorite for the event."

Johnson, NASCAR's Cup champion the past two years, is a prime example of what the Daytona 24 Hour has evolved into: an all-star race. As the first major race of the calendar year in the United States, the timing is right and the Grand-Am's regular teams need extra drivers to run all those laps.

Chip Ganassi Racing's Scott Pruett, Juan Pablo Montoya and Salvador Duran completed 668 laps in winning last season on the 3.56-mile, 14-turn circuit which utilizes part of those famous high banks. It's 100 more miles than the distance between Los Angeles and Detroit.

Ganassi has assembled a small army of drivers in his two-car effort. His full-season team of Pruett and Memo Rojas has been augmented by Montoya and Dario Franchitti, his Sprint Cup drivers. From his IndyCar operation, Ganassi has put together a lineup of Scott Dixon, Dan Wheldon and Alex Lloyd to drive with Duran in the team's Lexus-powered Riley.

"I think it's a fun race," Dixon said. "The only downside to it is the test you have to do in early January. But the race itself, I don't know anybody who doesn't really enjoy doing it. It's the only time you get to be in the car for a long amount of time and you get a ton of cars to pass."

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