NASCAR Nextel : Johnson Wins Brickyard 400

INDIANAPOLIS August 6, 2006; Jenna Fryer writing for the AP reported that Jimmie Johnson kneeled on the Yard of Bricks with a bewildered look on his face, almost oblivious to the celebration going on around him.

His car owner, crew chief and wife were ecstatic, exchanging hugs and high-fives as they eagerly prepared to kiss the famous stretch of track surface at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

But Johnson stared straight ahead, seemingly unable to grasp Sunday's gritty victory that ended a career of frustration at the Brickyard and made him the official favorite to win the Nextel Cup championship.

"I doubted this race track. I doubted my ability to get around this track," he said. "We've been kicking ourselves for years. So to get over this hurdle, to get past it, I am just so full inside and I just want to go sit down and reflect and think about it. Just go sit down in a corner and chill out and relax."

This win seemed doubtful from the start.

His radio wasn't working when he climbed into his Chevrolet on the starting grid, and his Hendrick Motorsports team frantically worked to fix it before the race began.

It took him just a handful of laps to figure out his car was stout enough to challenge for the win, but a flat tire 39 laps nearly wiped it out.

"It really deflated me," he admitted.

Stressed that his fender has been damaged and the car had been reduced to junk, Johnson was subdued when he headed to pit road. His team changed the tire, crew chief Chad Knaus gave him a quick pep-talk, and Johnson was off.

Only he was in 38th place.

He still sliced his way through the field and aggressively powered to the front with about 100 miles to go.

The race was his to lose — until a late caution for debris with 19 laps to go almost took it from him.

Johnson pitted for four fresh tires and was in eighth when the race resumed with 14 to go, stuck behind four cars that didn't pit, two that took only two new tires and Matt Kenseth.

But the traffic was never an issue, and Johnson was back out front for the final 10.

He crossed the finish line ahead of Kenseth moments before a final caution for a last-lap accident involving Chase for the Championship contenders Kasey Kahne and Greg Biffle.

It was his fourth victory of the season, third in a major NASCAR event. Johnson won the season-opening Daytona 500 — the only event that trumps Indianapolis in prestige — and also triumphed in NASCAR's All-Star race. He joins Dale Jarrett (1996) as the only driver to win at Daytona and Indy in the same season.

Now he'll have to see if he can translate his Indy win into a championship.

The winner of the Brickyard automatically becomes the favorite to win the title, and five of the past eight went on to do it.

Johnson will now give it a try in his constant pursuit of an elusive first championship.

The perpetual points leader has never been able to put together a full season, and his swoon typically begins in Indy. He went into the race as the leader the past two seasons, but finished 36th in 2004 and 38th last year to cough it away to Tony Stewart — who parlayed the victory into his second championship while Johnson faded all the way back to fifth.

Now Johnson will try to do the same.

"This has been the critical time leading into the championship, but this track has been an emotional disaster or some sort of disaster for us," he said. "I'm just speechless."

Kenseth, who has been sitting in second behind Johnson the past nine weeks and is 107 points out of the lead, said he had no chance to run down Johnson for the win.

"The 48 came out of nowhere and blew us all and won the race," said Kenseth. "He just got through traffic better than us. He just did a better job of being in the right place getting through those cars."

Kevin Harvick was third and Clint Bowyer, his rookie teammate at Richard Childress Racing, was fourth.

Mark Martin was fifth and Dale Earnhardt Jr. stole a sixth-place finish by not pitting on the final caution to salvage a horrible day and reclaim the 10th spot in the Chase for the championship standings.

"I'd love to have a better car so we don't have to make those kinds of calls," he said. "We need to do better and get better cars. We can't make the Chase with 30th-place race cars."

Kyle Busch was seventh, followed by Stewart, Carl Edwards and Kurt Busch.

Jeff Burton, who started from the pole and led a race-high 87 laps, finished a disappointing 12th after fading late.

Jeff Gordon, looking to race his way into the record books, never got the chance. He broke the sway bar on his Chevrolet just eight laps into the race and had to stop to have the part replaced. The repair work dropped him three laps off the pace, and even though he worked his way back onto the lead lap he wound up 16th.

The poor day prevented him from tying two distinguished marks — joining Formula One superstar Michael Schumacher as the only five-time winners in Indy history, and the late Dale Earnhardt's mark of 76 Cup wins.

Although Gordon was pleased with the comeback, he was dismayed by Earnhardt Jr.'s final result because of the impact it could have on the Chase field. Gordon is eighth, Stewart is ninth and Earnhardt is 10th with five races to go to make the playoffs.

"Junior lucked out there big time at the end," Gordon said. "He was horrible all day, and that is going to hurt us as well as the fact that we weren't up there where we needed to be because of the problems we had."

The last-lap accident with Kahne and Biffle hurt both of their title hopes. Kahne dropped four spots in the standings to 11th and Biffle is now 12th with opportunities to race into the postseason quickly evaporating.

"We're dwindling out of the Chase hunt, but that's the way it goes," said Biffle, last season's runner-up.