Jimmie Johnson continues to astound with dominant victory at Charlotte

No matter which way the question was asked, Jimmie Johnson, crew chief Chad Knaus and Rick Hendrick all kept insisting the same thing.

The 2009 Chase For The Sprint Cup is far from over. There’s a lot of racing left. Anything can happen.

But questioned directly on whether Johnson is “stinking up the show” by winning three of the first five Chase races – including the NASCAR Banking 500 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway – and holding a 90-point lead halfway through NASCAR’s playoffs, the driver revealed perhaps another line of thinking.

He compared himself to two of the most dominant athletes on the planet.

“I guess I don’t understand why people would have a problem with it,” Johnson said. “Everybody tunes in to watch Tiger [Woods] win. Everybody tunes in to watch [Roger] Federer do his thing on certain courts. I’m just doing my thing.”

And really, when you think about it, being halfway to his fourth consecutive Cup championship means he’s not too far off.

But for the competition, Johnson’s “perfect weekend” at Charlotte was a severe blow to their championship hopes.

Johnson led all three practices. He won the pole. He then led the most laps and won the race.

The most impressive thing about Johnson’s latest run has been that despite the massive target on his back, no one can stop him.

With only two fresh tires, Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon raced Johnson about as hard as humanly possible with 15 laps to go – and perhaps even one of the machines from his Transformers-sponsored car could not have defeated NASCAR’s Superman.

But Johnson held off the charge, passed Gordon and cruised away for a 2.3-second victory.

Like a giant sloughing off boulder attacks as if they were pebbles, Johnson stood tall as his biggest threats to a 48 four-peat crumbled.

Juan Pablo Montoya had strung together a Cinderella run, with four consecutive top-five finishes to begin the Chase. He had even out-run Johnson at times, an accomplishment which alone may someday result in a NASCAR trophy.

Yet Montoya found trouble on several restarts, and the resulting contact damaged his car. He finished a disappointing 35th – four laps down – and dropped to sixth in the standings. Now 195 points behind Johnson with only five races to recover, Montoya’s championship hopes suddenly seem finished.

“Oh, it’s OK,” Montoya said. “It’s racing. If you’re expecting to have 10 clean races, then you’re dreaming.”

But somehow, that dream continues to last for Johnson. The driver of the No. 48 car has now gone an incredible 31 straight races in the Chase without finishing outside the top 15.

Johnson is so good, he outruns the bad luck and misfortune that plagues other drivers.

Take Carl Edwards, for example. The media’s preseason favorite to overtake Johnson and deny him a fourth-straight title endured a lackluster regular season and flopped to 10th in the Chase after finishing 39th at Charlotte. He blew an engine, which he labeled as a “mercy killing,” to drop an insurmountable 341 points behind Johnson.

“That’s the most frustrated I’ve been in a long time, but you can’t do anything about it,” he said. “This is auto racing; a thousand things have to go right, and if any of them go wrong, your night is bad.”

But somehow, Johnson seems to avoid these bad days and nights.

Another former contender to Johnson’s throne, Denny Hamlin, declared his title chances finished after he, too, blew a motor and finished 42nd. Prior to the Chase, he had
declared himself as the best hope to knock off Johnson.

No more.

“We’re definitely done as far as the championship is concerned,” Hamlin said. “The way that we’re running, we belong up top. A couple mistakes … takes you right out of it.”

Hamlin noted that nights like the one he had at Charlotte were “what sucks about this points system.”

“If you have one bad week, whether because of a driver mistake or a parts failure, you’re done,” he said. “Your season’s over with. That part of it is frustrating.”

Johnson, though, seems to avoid those troubles.

And then there was Mark Martin, Johnson’s Hendrick teammate, who had also seemed to be Johnson’s strongest challenger.

The 50-year-old has always called Charlotte one of his favorite tracks, and by putting up practice and qualifying speeds just off those of Johnson’s, Martin figured to have a strong run.

But he did not, finishing a disappointing 17th and falling from just 12 points off the lead to 90 behind.

“We missed it,” Martin said. “Usually we’re pretty good on the long run. The longer we would run, the further we’d fall off. We could hold on pretty good on new tires, but we would drop like a rock.

“I don’t know where we missed it. I don’t know what we did wrong. It was just a tough night for us. It was just one of those nights where everything wasn’t right on.”
Martin said he didn’t anticipate the off-night and said he was “surprised.” Asked if he was disappointed, Martin replied, “You’re going to have days like this.”

“Most people are,” he said.

Not Johnson – at least not since 2006.

In achieving the “perfect weekend” – a goal Knaus held close to his heart but Johnson was unaware of until race day – the 34-year-old Californian tied Buck Baker for 13th on NASCAR’s all-time win list with 46. He moved into a tie with Darrell Waltrip and Bobby Allison for the most career victories at Charlotte, the home track for most
NASCAR teams.

Yet some fans went home unhappy. They had cheered when Gordon raced hard with Johnson, many hoping for a win by “ABJ” – Anybody But Jimmie.
Johnson, just doing his thing, offered no apologies.

“I think there’s a lot of fans out there that are excited to see what this 48 car is doing, and a lot of people are happy and rooting for us to win a fourth,” he said.

“The rest of them – oh well.”

– Bob Pockrass contributed to this story