In the five seasons that NASCAR has used the “Chase for the Sprint Cup” format, no driver has ever won the September Dover race and gone on to win the championship. In the history of NASCAR, no driver has ever won four championships in a row. Perhaps history will change twice this season?
That’s the way Jimmie Johnson would like to see things after he drove to victory in the “AAA 400” NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race on Sunday at the Monster Mile. It’s his fifth career win at the one-mile, concrete oval and completes the season sweep after also he won in May 2009. It’s the second time in Johnson’s career that he’s swept both races at Dover. He won twice at Dover in 2002.
Points leader Mark Martin, No. 5 Kellogg’s/CARQUEST Chevrolet, finished second, which meant Johnson wasn’t able to overtake Martin, but he did trim Martin’s points lead from 35 points to just 10 with eight races remaining in the Chase.
“For me, this is one of the closest tracks to off-road racing that we have on the circuit,” said Johnson. “You’re virtually airborne off in each corner, so I think that helps me some and relates back to the vehicles I drove growing up. This track really favors a loose race car, and just by habit I enjoy a loose race car and that’s what I look for everyday at each track. So it just really plays into our style.”
“It feels like 15 years [since his last top-five finish],” Kenseth said. “It’s good to get a little momentum. For the last four or five years this has been one of our best tracks on the circuit, so if we hadn’t done well here I would have been even more worried. We didn’t qualify very good but we were really happy with our car in practice. We got most of our track position through pit stops and restarts. We had a nice solid day on pit road, and were able to get a decent finish out of it.”
Juan Pablo Montoya, No. 42 Polaroid Chevrolet, started second, ran in the top five all day and finished fourth. Kurt Busch ended up fifth, followed by Jeff Gordon, A.J. Allmendinger, Kasey Kahne, Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman in the top-10.
FIN CAR DRIVER MAKE 1 48 Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet 2 5 Mark Martin Chevrolet 3 17 Matt Kenseth Ford 4 42 Juan Montoya Chevrolet 5 2 Kurt Busch Dodge 6 24 Jeff Gordon Chevrolet 7 44 A.J. Allmendinger Dodge 8 9 Kasey Kahne Dodge 9 14 Tony Stewart Chevrolet 10 39 Ryan Newman Chevrolet 11 99 Carl Edwards Ford 12 29 Kevin Harvick Chevrolet 13 16 Greg Biffle Ford 14 47 Marcos Ambrose Toyota 15 33 Clint Bowyer Chevrolet 16 31 Jeff Burton Chevrolet 17 7 Casey Mears Chevrolet 18 83 Brian Vickers Toyota 19 98 Paul Menard Ford 20 88 Dale Earnhardt Jr. Chevrolet 21 0 David Reutimann Toyota 22 11 Denny Hamlin Toyota 23 96 Bobby Labonte Ford 24 6 David Ragan Ford 25 82 Scott Speed * Toyota 26 77 Sam Hornish Jr. Dodge 27 34 John Andretti Chevrolet 28 26 Jamie McMurray Ford 29 12 David Stremme Dodge 30 19 Elliott Sadler Dodge 31 18 Kyle Busch Toyota 32 78 Regan Smith Chevrolet 33 1 Martin Truex Jr. Chevrolet 34 7 Robby Gordon Toyota 35 43 Reed Sorenson Dodge 36 55 Michael Waltrip Toyota 37 66 Dave Blaney Toyota 38 36 Michael McDowell Toyota 39 171 David Gilliland Chevrolet 40 9 Mike Bliss Dodge 41 187 Joe Nemechek Toyota 42 20 Joey Logano * Toyota 43 37 Tony Raines Dodge
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