Around Iredell Sports

2007 Nov-07

Kenseth, Johnson a breathtaking finish

By Mike Mulhern

FORT WORTH, Texas - Matt Kenseth and Jimmie Johnson have a higher appreciation for each other’s skills and grit today, after Sunday night’s breathtaking finish in the Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.

And that’s saying something — Kenseth was the 2004 NASCAR tour champion, and Johnson won last year.

In fact they amazed each other, they said Sunday night, separately, after Johnson’s tense victory under the lights.

“At the end, it came down to a full-blown brawl with Matt, in a good way. We both wanted that win really bad,” Johnson said after his ninth win of the season, as the crowd of some 200,000 trailed out into the night.

“It was a lot of fun, knowing I didn’t have to worry about him putting me in a bad position because of the championship, and he also knew I wouldn’t come in there and clean him out, and take him out, both of us racing at a shot for the win.

“I remember at Atlanta, after the plane went down (near Martinsville), and how hard I drove the car against Mark Martin to win that race. That’s probably the hardest I ever have driven a car.

“And this one is right there with it. It’s in the top three or top four victories. For difficult situations, this is the top of the list. If you saw, I was dead sideways, Matt was sideways, and he was crowding me, and I was trying to move him up — and trying to do all that at 190 mph.

“It’s pretty intense.”

The NASCAR Nextel Cup championship is now down to Johnson and teammate Jeff Gordon, and if those two go at each other in one of the final two races as hard as Kenseth and Johnson went at each other Sunday night, the title could be decided by the crew with the best talent at damage repair.

Johnson and Kenseth took their already formidable games to a new level Sunday.

Kenseth tried to play on Johnson’s “big picture”’ view of the race, with the championship on the line in these final weeks of the season. And he squeezed Johnson every which way.

They almost crashed at least twice in the closing laps. And after one of those brushes, Johnson, on the radio, seemed to ask crew chief Chad Knaus if it might be OK to settle for second.

But Johnson quickly sucked it back up, let his tires cool, and went back hard again against Kenseth, finally squeezing by with the winning pass with only two laps to go in the 334-lapper around the extremely fast 1-1/2-mile track.

Johnson could easily have lost the championship with just one slip.

“It entered my mind.… and I feel I was doing a good job balancing those emotions,” Johnson said.

It also entered car owner Rick Hendrick’s mind: “Thought about it. We’ve got an awful lot at stake here. And Jeff (Gordon) was running seventh. We don’t need to do this.

“But I felt Jimmie was under control, though I was nervous and wanting to hit the (radio) button.

“When I looked at Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth — Matt drove him hard (while those two were dueling for the lead just moments earlier), and Denny made a mistake, or they touched, I don’t know whose fault it was, but Denny broke loose, and it cost him. I had replay visions of that when I saw Jimmie up there with Matt.”

Johnson survived his duel with Kenseth and heads to Phoenix, next weekend’s stop, for Round 9 of the 10-race championship Chase with a 30-point lead over Gordon.

“There are only a handful of guys I would feel comfortable racing that hard with at the end, being in the position we’re in,” Johnson said. “Not many. And Matt certainly is one.

“I’ve had a lot of great racing with Matt over the years, and we both have respect for each other, that we can get in there and do it all without running each other over.”

Kyle Busch, one of Johnson’s teammates, had dominated the race, but a flurry of late cautions shuffled the deck, and the race came down to, first, a pit-road battle, then the door-to-door battle between Kenseth and Johnson.

Kenseth had the lead down the stretch after a two-tire stop, while most of the rest, including Johnson, stopped for four.

“When it was 39 to go and we’d stopped to take those tires, I said ‘Man, ready to pull out your cape?’” Knaus said of his talk with Johnson. “He said ‘Man, I’ve been waiting all night.’ “
“There’s something that takes over,” Johnson said of such clutch performances over his relatively short time in the sport. “I don’t look forward to these pressure-packed situations. It’s not like I sit up late at night and hope that that’s a situation that develops. But when I’m in them, I do a decent job in those moments. And I think that’s something our team has done a really great job with, too. That’s part of the makeup of this race team — when the pressure is on, we do a good job.

“When I got inside Matt, he was crowding me, doing his job to protect the win. I knew I was going to have to somehow find a way by, and if I didn’t clear him in the corner, he was going to side-draft me and blow back by on the straight. In Vegas, he blew by me on the outside.”

But Johnson came out with the win there, too.

“When I was trying to chase him down, I got to a point I thought ‘Well, maybe I’m not going to get the job done,’” Johnson said. “Then he started leaving me the bottom, which let me understand his stuff was starting to tighten up, the two tires weren’t working, and he was running defense rather than offense.

“My four tires were better than his two, that’s for sure. But I couldn’t clear him. And he did the right thing to slow me down and keep me from passing. I knew if I could clear him I could check out. But I couldn’t get the pass. I tried twice, and the second time I got it.”

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Kenseth, Johnson a breathtaking finish

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