In a race dominated by tire-wear issues and punctuated—for safety’s sake—by the staccato insertion of frequent competition cautions, Johnson held off Carl Edwards in a furious seven-lap run to the finish to win his second Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, by .333 seconds.
Denny Hamlin, who was leading when NASCAR threw the final competition caution on Lap 150, finished third, followed by Elliott Sadler and Jeff Gordon.
After a two-tire call by crew chief Chad Knaus, Johnson was first out of the pits, with Edwards second, for the final restart on Lap 154. Edwards thought his car was fast enough to catch and pass the No. 48 Chevrolet, but he was wrong.
“Chad called the race perfectly, and we had a great stop at the end,” said Johnson, who won his second race of the season and the 35th of his career. “Carl put about as much pressure on us as he could. I knew from chasing Denny the run before that, even if he was a little faster, he couldn’t get by us.”
Edwards was clearly disappointed after being unable to prevent Johnson and his team from lining up at the start-finish line for the traditional kissing of the bricks.
“I honestly believed I was going to be able to drive by Jimmie,” he said of their finishing seven-lap shootout. “He was holding back a little more than I thought he was. I just could never get to him. I thought it was ours.”
Amid all the negativity surrounding the race, veteran Jeff Burton—whose ninth-place finish included extending his laps run at Indy to an event-record 2,365—jokingly predicted disgruntled fans might one day brag about having been there on the day a strange bit of history was made.
“In 25 or 30 years, they can call it whatever they want,’’ he said. “I thought it was kind of fun—10-lap sprints, you know. It was less work, like running little heat races with new tires every 10 laps.”
So NASCAR scheduled a competition caution to check tire wear after 10 laps, but it didn’t even get that far as Michael Waltrip spun on the fourth lap to bring out the first yellow. Some of the teams decided to pit then, including 12th-place finisher Dale Earnhardt Jr.
“I liked it, because it was less work,” Earnhardt said sarcastically. “It was kind of fun, little 10-lap sprints, little heat races, getting new tires every 10 laps, it was great.”
NASCAR pushed back the lap 10 caution to 14, but again the field didn’t make it. Kurt Busch wrecked into Kevin Harvick on that lap to bring out another yellow. Because Earnhardt had already pitted, he stayed out and assumed the lead with the intention of trying to run to the next planned caution on lap 30.
But his tire started to fade four laps short of the stop, dropping him off the pace and a lap down when he had to pit under green.
Still, Earnhardt defended NASCAR.
“The truth of the deal is that was the best show we could put on today, NASCAR did everything right,” he said. “It’s all we could do aside from loading up and going home and not running at all. Yeah, it wasn’t quite the race everybody expected, but shoot it was better than some of the races you’ve probably seen here.”
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