With fifth win of the season, the 45th of his career and the third in a row in the fall race at Fontana, Johnson moved 12 points ahead of Martin in the standings. Montoya is third, 58 points back, and Stewart stands fourth, 84 behind Johnson. Gordon improved two positions to fifth in the standings, 105 points out.
“I try not to the have the mind-set that we come back to a track that we’ve had success at and we’re expected to run well,” he said. “You have to go out every week, and it’s the same thing for this championship.
“Just because we’ve done well the last three years doesn’t mean that we’re a shoo-in for the fourth. So I’ve just got to stay focused on my job and go out and earn it each lap and see where things fall into place. We needed to run well [Sunday] to get points because, obviously, the 5 [Martin] and the 42 [Montoya] ran well.”
“We did work on the car some, but I think it came to us,” Johnson said. “I think it made the track slick, and the lines I was running and the balance we had with the car really helped us. So it really came in our direction.”
RANK DRIVER POINTS WINS 1 Jimmie Johnson 5728 5 2 Mark Martin 5716 5 3 Juan Montoya 5670 0 4 Tony Stewart 5644 4 5 Jeff Gordon 5623 1 6 Kurt Busch 5607 1 7 Greg Biffle 5540 0 8 Carl Edwards 5536 0 9 Denny Hamlin 5509 2 10 Ryan Newman 5505 0 11 Kasey Kahne 5422 2 12 Brian Vickers 5377 1 13 Kyle Busch 3613 4 14 Matt Kenseth 3599 2 15 Clint Bowyer 3549 0 16 David Reutimann 3526 1 17 Marcos Ambrose 3274 0 18 Jeff Burton 3135 0 19 Casey Mears 3123 0 20 Joey Logano* 3042 1 21 Kevin Harvick 3032 0 22 Dale Earnhardt Jr. 2937 0 23 Jamie McMurray 2877 0 24 A.J. Allmendinger 2865 0 25 Martin Truex Jr. 2847 0 26 Sam Hornish Jr. 2807 0 27 Elliott Sadler 2806 0 28 David Ragan 2673 0 29 Reed Sorenson 2658 0 30 David Stremme 2647 0 31 Bobby Labonte 2614 0 32 Paul Menard 2529 0 33 Michael Waltrip 2316 0 34 Robby Gordon 2277 0 35 Scott Speed* 2204 0 36 John Andretti 2137 0
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