news-record.com

INDIANAPOLIS - Jimmie Johnson said it Friday and showed it Sunday.

"We're back.''

Overshadowed by Kyle Busch's dominance this season, Johnson and his team have been building to this - a second win at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and momentum heading into the final six races before the Chase for the Sprint Cup begins.

The significance of Johnson's victory is easy to overlook in a race where tire wear was so poor NASCAR called six cautions to keep cars from crashing.

One shouldn't let the bizarre race obscure the performance by Johnson, who outran runner-up Carl Edwards and third-place finisher Denny Hamlin.

Johnson earned his sixth top-10 finish in the last eight starts and followed his near-win at Chicagoland Speedway, where he lost the lead to Busch with two laps left and finished second, by leading a race-high 71 laps Sunday.

Johnson won't celebrate long. He's scheduled to test at Road Atlanta today to prepare for the Watkins Glen race in two weeks.

"I can promise you we're digging in pretty deep,'' Johnson said. "I think any race track we go to right now, I'm very proud to say I think we can run top five speeds. If you can do that on a weekly basis, you're going to be in position to try to go for a championship.''

The two-time defending series champ has made up for a slow start where he had one top-10 finish in the season's first five races. Only Busch and Carl Edwards have scored more points than Johnson since the fifth race of the season.

What's important to note is Johnson's strength in the last four high-horsepower tracks - Pocono, Michigan, Chicago and Indianapolis. He's finished no worse than sixth in each of those races and has led the most laps twice. That's critical because five of the 10 Chase races are at 1.5-mile tracks where horsepower is critical.

"We've known that we've been hitting on the right things,'' Johnson said after his 35th career victory. "We could see the momentum. We just had a lot of races where strategy came into play and it didn't work out for us.''

Celebrating his second Indy win and earning $509,236 was not easy because of the excessive tire wear. Teams went about eight green-flag laps before losing grip. That stretched to about 10-12 laps later in the race but well short of the 30 laps they should have been able to run, as in years past.

Pit work and pit calls became key with all the extra stops. The more positions gained on pit road the better since drivers had only a handful of laps to make a move before pitting for new tires.

Johnson, who won the pole, benefited from having the first pit stall. That allowed him to not worry about being blocked in by a car in front and to accelerate quicker since he was near the final timing line.

Johnson entered the pits first and exited in the lead after the final pit stop nine laps from the end.

"If Jimmie hadn't had the pole (and) he was pitted down the other end, we might have beat him out,'' said Edwards who started ninth. ""Might have been a different race.

"They earned it. We just need to do a better job of qualifying.''

While Johnson excelled, Busch struggled. He and his brother Kurt had combined to win the last four Cup races. Neither was a factor Sunday. Kurt Busch crashed early and Kyle Busch struggled. The final pit stop doomed Kyle Busch.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. hit the tire Busch's tire carrier was bringing to the right side of the car, slowing the two-tire stop. Busch lost five spots to 17th and finished 15th.

"That just killed our day,'' Busch said.

He wasn't the only disappointed driver.

Mark Martin, who predicted last month that he would win this race, never led a lap and finished 11th.

"I wasn't going to be able to back up my prediction, but we had a lot better car than we finished,'' said Martin, who twice had to make green-flag pit stops for tires because his wore so quickly.

While many will remember this race for the tire problems, Johnson isn't worried about being lost in history.

"This (trophy) is going to be sitting at my house and I'm a happy man,'' Johnson said.

Contact Dustin Long at 373-7062 or dustin.long@news-record.com