ShareThisBy MIKE MULHERN
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Kevin Harvick seized the day, but in the end it probably won't be enough to wrestle the Nextel Cup championship away from Jimmie Johnson, unless something weird happens this week at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Johnson, the leader in the Chase for the Nextel Cup, increased his lead on everyone but Harvick in Sunday's Checker Auto Parts 500. He dueled Harvick hard all afternoon, but in the final moments decided not to press the issue with the nose of his car, letting Harvick escape with a two-length victory.
"I knew he was going to push me," Harvick said after his fifth tour win this comeback season, in front of a crowd of some 106,000. "But I figured he wasn't going to take any unnecessary chances. He was just going to try to see if he could make us make a mistake and slip up enough to where he could get all the way under.
"Luckily we didn't do that."
Johnson said: "I was in a position just inside of him going into the dogleg where his spotter must have been saying 'Looking!' If I had been close enough inside, I would have had a lane into turn three. But I was just barely there, and he came down to block, and we touched.
"If I'd stayed on the gas, it would have turned him into the grass, and it would have been one hell of a mess. I saw that developing, and I didn't want any part of that. We just needed to be smart.
"I was really pushing for a win _ we had such a great car I didn't want to not put up a strong effort for the win. But I knew in order to win I was going to have to force the issue."
If Johnson does hold on to win this year's title, it still may not make up for his bitter loss in 2004.
"At the time it was hard to swallow _ and I'm not sure if time helps things go by," Johnson said. "I've tried to learn. I look at that year and don't feel we left anything on the table. It was the last race of the year, and at one point in the race we were the champion.
"I don't have any negative feelings from any of the years we've been close but didn't deliver. We're just learning from those experiences, becoming a stronger, better race team. And I couldn't be more proud of everything they are doing."
With a fairly comfortable 63-point lead over second-place Matt Kenseth and 90 over Harvick and Denny Hamlin, Johnson needs only to finish 12th or better at Homestead-Miami to take the title. Sounds fairly easy....
Johnson has been hot at just the right point of the season. His August-September-October slump forced him to play catch-up.
"I never expected Jeff Burton to have as much difficulty and let a lot of us back in it," Johnson said. "But I never conceded. I just said 'Let's go all-out. We have nothing to lose.' That's been our philosophy the last couple of months.
"Unfortunately, we got off to a slow start. We were performing well, but we had some bad luck, had some wrecks.
"We have not needed a strategy because we have not been performing well. Sometimes I wish Chad (Knaus, his crew chief) had more of a strategy. But we worked our way back."
His Homestead plan?
"I have no idea _ I seriously don't have any clue what to expect," Johnson said.
His ace: "I have a lot of confidence in myself, a lot of confidence in the team and our equipment, and as my mind plays its games on me, I just fall back on the team _ Chad and (car owner) Rick Hendrick."
