For Johnson, it's down
to a single-race Chase

CONCORD, N.C. -- The blue and silver Chevrolet dipped to the bottom of the race track, and zoomed past the only vehicle in front of it with a move that carried a certain degree of finality. There are five races remaining in this Chase for the Sprint Cup, five trying events at five challenging tracks that can still shape the title picture. But in all reality, after Saturday night at Lowe's Motor Speedway, Jimmie Johnson's bid for an unprecedented fourth consecutive championship on NASCAR's premier circuit now comes down to a single afternoon.

For Johnson, it's effectively a one-race Chase. He'll deny it, of course, and point to a million possible doomsday scenarios, as any driver in his position would. But the 90-point lead he carried away from metro Charlotte on Saturday is the biggest any competitor has enjoyed at the halfway mark of the playoff series. Johnson is in a stronger position now than he's been in any of three most recent title runs. He's bound for his best track, tiny Martinsville Speedway, where he's won six of his last seven starts. Barring the kind of catastrophic mechanical failure that his No. 48 team has managed to avoid over its magical run, it all comes down to one final hurdle.

Talladega Superspeedway, Nov. 1. Because of the schedule switch prior to this season that helped facilitate the date swap between Atlanta and Auto Club Speedway, this year marks the first time that the menacing restrictor-plate venue has fallen this late in the Chase. Statistically it's one of Johnson's worse tracks, a place he's failed to finish six times, a place where chaos can erupt at any moment, a place where this past spring Carl Edwards went spinning into the restraining fence. If Johnson gets through 500 miles on that howling, sinister, metal-mashing Talladega surface with his car intact, then it's over.

Done.

Finished.

Naturally, Johnson doesn't agree.

"That's the track that you don't have any control at," he said of Talladega. "But at the same time, I mean, we're only halfway through this thing. So much can happen. Somebody at Martinsville can lose their brakes and clean you out. With the double-file restarts, there's going to be a lot of bumping and banging. Somebody can get into you and knock a valve stem out, or cut a tire. It's a nice point lead, but there's no need for anybody to get excited yet. We've got good tracks ahead for us, so from a team standpoint, we're excited. We're optimistic. But at the same time, there's a lot of danger out there, and we've got to be smart."

And yet, the evidence to the contrary is becoming overwhelming at this point. Consider that since the playoff format was implemented prior to the 2004 season, no driver before Johnson had ever won three of the first five Chase events. Consider that prior to Saturday night, the largest advantage enjoyed by a points leader leaving Charlotte was 69, held last year by you-know-who. Consider that with each passing season, Johnson asserts himself a little more, and wins the title by a wider margin. Yes, he rallied from the unthinkable sum of 146 points down at this point to win his first championship three years ago. But now, the only Chase driver with the potential to do that is the one in the lead. (Continued)