Johnson poised for second-half surge

Just back from a European vacation, Jimmie Johnson took Sunday's tire disaster at the Brickyard in stride, played his hand coolly, and launched what he and wily crew chief Chad Knaus hope will be a successful second half of the NASCAR season after a rather woeful first half.

Johnson, the two-time defending Sprint Cup champion, had tire problems just like everyone else, but he had something no one else had -- the best car in the field.

"Everybody is courageous and brave, committed to going fast ... but when you get to technical tracks and technical situations, there's a handful of teams and drivers that rise to the top. I wanted to be that guy. I feel I am that guy and we are that team," Johnson said.

"There are certain teams that can perform in those situations. And I'm proud to say that this team is one of them. We don't have the results to show for it. Chicago was obvious: We had a great car, ran up front, and finished second. If you look to Loudon, we were running down Tony Stewart.... Go back to Michigan, we led the most laps. At Pocono we were up front all day long, led a bunch of laps.

"So as a team we've been hitting on the right things, we could see the momentum. We just had a lot of races where strategy came into play and it didn't work out. But we knew deep down inside we were running up front and making good progress. That's where that confidence came from -- knowing we're going down the right road."

Knaus agreed that his team has finally turned the corner: "If you look at the races -- not necessarily the finishes, but the races themselves -- over the last 10 to 12 weeks, we've been right there. That's everywhere from Loudon to Daytona to Lowe's Motor Speedway, we have run pretty competitively.

"Any 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 weekly, you're going to be in position to go for a championship. I think we're there now."

And the Brickyard win, which boosted Johnson to fourth in the Sprint Cup standings (315 points behind leader Kyle Busch), certainly came on one of the most difficult days of the season.

Runner-up Carl Edwards used the word "debacle."

Ryan Newman made the case equally bluntly: "That wasn't a race. It's ridiculous. That's lack of preparation from NASCAR to Goodyear to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, to put on a show like they did for the fans. It's disrespectful to the fans. That's not the way NASCAR racing is supposed to be."

Bobby Labonte said that the frustration level for the drivers was high: "You just wanted to scream.... Ten laps and a caution, that's not racing."

But it was, after all, a race of sorts, and Johnson and Knaus outfoxed the competition to win.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)