For everyone but Johnson, the end is near
AVONDALE, Ariz. – The guy who raced Jimmie Johnson hardest on Sunday was Joey Logano.
It was the rookie Logano who, as the end of the Checker O’Reilly 500 neared, held Johnson up for a handful of laps, thus briefly enabling Logano’s teammate, Denny Hamlin, to catch Johnson’s Chevrolet.
But, alas, eventually Johnson slipped under Logano, and away he went, vanquishing Hamlin’s Toyota and winning for the seventh time this season and fourth time in his career at Phoenix International Raceway.
“I was trying to be smooth,” said Johnson, “and I’m not sure whether the ‘20’ car was trying to stay just one lap down or help his teammate, but the ‘20’ car wasn’t being very friendly.”
By failing to stem the Johnson tide, Logano fell two laps down while Johnson was crashing through yet another barrier on his way to a fourth straight Sprint Cup championship. Not too long afterwards, Jeff Burton slipped past Hamlin to take second place.
After the first 50 of the 312 laps, Johnson’s superiority was crystal clear.
“The first run the car was real loose, but after that, it was good all day,” he said.
Burton closed in on Johnson near the end, but the runner-up was a realist when asked the inevitable “could you catch him?”
“I don’t know,” said Burton. “We were catching him, but Johnson has a way of finding a little extra when he needs it. I’m sure the final three or four laps that he knew the margin he had.”
As he crossed the line, Johnson’s edge was a comfortable 1.033 seconds.
A week after Johnson became an unwitting victim of a third-lap crash at Texas Motor Speedway, he moved quickly to the lead, taking it for the first time by passing Kurt Busch on the 53rd lap. Busch then led the 54th before surrendering to Johnson, basically, for good. From lap 53 on, Johnson led 238 of the remaining 260.
Johnson, who normally errs on the side of the cautious, allowed himself a bit of candor, admitting “we dominated this race” (as if there were some doubt).
“We don’t need to get too excited about things, but 100-something (with only one race remaining, Johnson’s point lead is 108) is better than 73 (the margin when the race began),” he said.
The wide-eyed amazement on the part of Johnson, crew chief Chad Knaus and owner Rick Hendrick is achingly familiar to everyone chasing them for the past four years, even teammate Jeff Gordon, who once won four championships himself.
“It’s no surprise,” he said. “We’ve seen them do it before. That’s why they’re three-time champs, soon to be four.”
