Oh yeah, Jimmie Johnson won at Texas
FORT WORTH, Texas – When was the last time a win by Jimmie Johnson in the Chase was an afterthought?
Johnson held off Brad Keselowski and Kevin Harvick on a second green-white-checker finish at Texas on Sunday night to win his third-straight fall Chase race at the track.
The No. 48 was the dominant car of the day, but Johnson and crew needed two late restarts to take the lead and the win. On the third-to-last restart, Jeff Gordon passed Johnson and set sail away from the field. However, the caution that set up the restart causing the kerfuffle between Gordon and Keselowski gave Johnson another shot at the lead.
“Quite honestly, if the next caution hadn’t have come out, [Gordon] definitely would have won the race,” Johnson’s crew chief Chad Knaus said. “Jimmie got a really good restart on the last restart. I don’t know exactly what happened between Brad and Jeff. Obviously those guys got tangled up and there was some chaos there. But we were able to scoot away, get going.”
“Then on the next one, Jimmie did a great job on that restart. Got out there, was able to check out a little bit. I think there was more beating and banging behind us. We were kind of ahead of that, thank goodness.”
The caution that ended Gordon’s night was caused by Clint Bowyer’s crash. Gordon chose the outside line on the fateful restart and ensuing dominant story of the night, which surprised Johnson.
“The inside lane had been the successful lane,” Johnson said. “Jeff just got a really good start the restart before and got control of the race. He chose the outside lane again, which was shocking to me, because all night he’d taken the bottom.”
“As I was trying to piece things together, I was trying to make sure that [Kyle Busch] behind me got a good start. I was trying to communicate to him out the side of the car to let him know when I was going so he could get a run. I guess it was [Keselowski], not [Busch]. And get a run and try to clear the 24 into turn one.
“With him on my outside going through the corner, my car was pretty uncomfortable. Frankly, I just let off some, surrendered the position. I wasn’t going to take him out in the process. That’s how he got me the one where he checked out. Then [on the last restart] I was just trying to hold off [Keselowski] the best that I could. When things changed and the 24 wasn’t on my outside, there was no need to lift. I left it flat on the floor all the way through four and just cleared him off of turn four and came to the white at that point.”
Johnson, who was eliminated from the Chase two weeks ago at Talladega led 191 of the race’s 341 laps, the second time in three races he’s led the most laps. It was his 70th career victory in the Sprint Cup Series.
“We wanted to close out the year by having fun, and winning races helps you do that,” Johnson said. “But I have to give a lot of credit to our test session in Homestead earlier this week. We went down there and Chad and the guys started making me happy. I guess I’ve been unhappy for a while. These guys put some great speed in the racecar, got me really comfortable with the car. We were able to bring a lot of that here and get the car off the truck right away, it was quick, qualified third, and then dominated tonight and won the race.”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
