November 12, 2007
By Ron Felix

Johnson Celebrates 10th Win * CIA Stock Photo

Jimmie Johnson put the final nail in Jeff Gordon's Nextel Cup Championship hopes on Sunday by winning the Checker Auto Parts 500K at Phoenix International Raceway. Incredibly, it was the fourth straight victory for Johnson and it hasn't been done since Jeff Gordon accomplished the feat in 1998. Johnson will be going for a five in-a-row next week and that hasn't been done since Richard Petty did it in 1971.

"We only have seven more days until we do it again, I'll just try to keep my mind clear and take care of the things that I can control," said Johnson. I'll make sure my guys are doing the same thing and focus on next weekend. Now we've won four and you have to have four before you can win five."

It was Johnson's tenth victory of the season, the 33rd win of his 218 race career. Johnson increased his lead over Jeff Gordon, who finished tenth on the day, to an 86 point lead and a 241 point over third place in the standings driver, Clint Bowyer. Johnson has to finish only 18th or better to wrap up his second straight championship.

"I'm lucky to be in cars that are capable of winning races," Johnson continued. "The pit stops and the pit crews, they put me in that position. I've dumbfounded and I'm just as shocked as everyone else watching. I couldn't be more proud of this race team. We just have to go down to Homestead and be smart."

Greg Biffle was closing fast on Johnson in the final laps but Johnson saw what he was doing and picked up the pace. Biffle held on to second place.

"I struggled all day with it not turning and then loose in," said Biffle, explaining the handling of his Ford. "We just kept doing air pressure and wedge and all kinds of things. We got onto something at the end I wish we would have done at the beginning instead and felt we may have won this thing if we would have been on to what made the car go earlier in the race.”

Matt Kenseth was third and Tony Stewart finished fourth and pit troubles early in the race. Johnson and Kenseth were racing side-by-side for the lead when they both came up on rookie driver Aric Almirola. Almirola probably didn't know what to do and was blocking Kenseth more than he was trying to get out of the way.

"I don’t want to sit and complain about another driver, but he was running the top in one and two and the bottom of three and four every lap. That was consistent," Kenseth said. "That lap, when I finally got to him, I actually got outside of him off of two and he kind of ran me up in the wall a little bit, so I figured he was going to the bottom again and I rolled it outside and he just ran right up in front of me and stopped and Jimmie got by on the bottom.

"If Mark would have been in that car, it would have been a non-issue," Kenseth continued. "He would have let the racers race for the win, but everybody is out there doing the best they can. The 48 (Johnson) was better anyway. He probably would have passed me anyway, but it would have been a lot better of a battle if it wouldn’t have been for that.”

Ryan Newman brought his Dodge home in the fifth spot followed by Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Busch, Jeff Burton and Jeff Gordon to round out the top ten.

This is the sixth consecutive victory for Hendrick Motorsports. --

It looked for a while that pole sitter Carl Edwards, was going to run away with the race, but on lap 106 his engine let go and he pulled it into the garage. The engine didn't blow up and he returned to competition 38 laps later but was merely logging laps.

“That’s a great race car. That thing is awesome. It was something important in the engine," edwards said. "I don’t know what it is, but we don’t have many engine failures. It’s too bad to have one on this day, I would have welcomed one at Texas last week but to have it today – this Office Depot Fusion was so fast. I mean, I was out there just having a blast. I could go just about as fast as I wanted, so you don’t get that very often. It’s too bad it blew up.”

Juan Pablo Montoya finished 17th and took Raybestos Rookie of the Race honors for the third time in the last four races and 16th time this season. Montoya scored the best finish by a Raybestos Rookie this season at Phoenix.

“I guess this is a really bad track for Ganassi. I don’t know why. We struggled all day with the car pretty tight and when we tried to free it up it was really loose off and could never find a good balance. But hey, that’s the way it goes. Generally we’ve been pretty good. This is generally a bad car for us," said a smiling Montoya. "But hey, that’s the way it goes.”

During the first caution of the day, Larry Hartle, gas man for the No. 31 car, driven by Jeff Burton, was injured by a flying tire. He was taken to the infield care center and later transported to a local medical facility to further check out an injury to his knee. No word at press time on his condition.

The Nextel Cup Series moves to Homestead-Miami Speedway next Sunday November 18th, 2007, for the Ford 400. This will be the final race of a 36 race season. The race is scheduled to start at 3:00 p.m. Eastern time and will be covered by ABC television.

For full final race results...     (Insider Racing News)
For top-40 Nextel Cup drivers points...     (Insider Racing News)

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