Early wreck ends Johnson's top-10 streak

ROCKINGHAM, N.C. -- Four races into his 2002 rookie campaign, Jimmie Johnson left Atlanta Motor Speedway ranked in the NASCAR Top 10 for the first time.

And until Sunday, he'd been there ever since.

Entering the Subway 400 weekend at North Carolina Speedway, it had been 70 weeks since Johnson last left a racetrack ranked outside the top 10 in the Nextel Cup championship standings.

But when he exited Turn 4 on Lap 131 Sunday afternoon, Ken Schrader peeled down the track towards pit road from the high groove -- straight into Johnson's path.

Johnson swerved to miss Schrader's Dodge and slammed the inside retaining wall on the frontstretch, totaling his Chevrolet.

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"I guess all I can say is Schrader tried making pit road from the third lane, and I'm on the bottom, on new tires, digging. Before I know it, he's across the front of me," Johnson said.

"It's a terrible day. You'd think that people would wave, give some hand signals, something, if they're going to hit pit road."

Johnson's tenure in the NASCAR Top-10 was the ninth-longest such streak in NASCAR history. After finishing second to Matt Kenseth in the 2003 standings, he began the 2004 campaign with a fifth-place effort in the season opener at Daytona.

But he struggled from the get-go at Rockingham, posting the 29th-quickest time during Bud Pole qualifying. He improved dramatically in practice Saturday, surging to sixth-quickest in Happy Hour practice. But his woes returned come race time, as he failed to crack the top-20 all day before the accident.

Johnson's 41st-place finish is the worst of his career at Rockingham. He finished second to Bill Elliott here last fall.

"I drove off into (Turn) 3 and (Schrader) was at the top, and before I knew it he was in front of me and I pounded the wall," Johnson said. "Obviously, this is not the way we wanted to start the season, but there's a lot of races left and we'll just go on from here and collect points at the next one."