Jimmie Johnson retained the Nextel Cup point lead Sunday despite a miserable start to his weekend. Credit: Autostock

Johnson turns lemons into lemonade at Dover

Wreck, shared pit stall don't keep 48 team from top-10 run

DOVER, Del. -- Many aspects of Jimmie Johnson's Sunday at Dover International Speedway verged on the ridiculous, but his result in the Neighborhood Excellence 400 was nothing short of superb.

Credit: AP

Official Results Neighborhood Excellence 400 Pos. Driver Make 1. M. Kenseth Ford 2. J. McMurray Ford 3. K. Harvick Chevrolet 4. J. Burton Chevrolet 5. Ky. Busch Chevrolet 6. J. Johnson Chevrolet 7. K. Kahne Dodge 8. G. Biffle Ford 9. M. Martin Ford 10. D. Earnhardt Jr. Chevrolet • Complete results, click here • Driver standings, click here Victory LaneMatt Kenseth celebrates his second NNC win of the season Final lapsMcMurray, Kenseth and Harvick battle in the final laps Late-race woesTroubles for Sadler, Lepage and Robby Gordon Spin cyclePoints leader Jimmie Johnson has some trouble Stewart hands offTony Stewart hands off the No. 20 car to Ricky Rudd Sign up for TrackPass now BUY THE NEXTEL i836

Johnson, crew chief Chad Knaus and their Hendrick Motorsports crew turned in a terrible performance Friday, qualifying 42nd and a 40th-place start in Sunday's race. What's more, the poor lap forced the team to share a pit stall with Scott Wimmer's No. 4 contingent.

After the green flag, the team lost a lap on the race's first run and suffered damage in a wreck.

Still, Johnson and his team finished sixth.

"It was a great job," Knaus said. "This whole Lowe's team will just fight, fight, fight and ever since we've started all everyone has said is how strong this team is, and how hard they want to win and do well.

"[Sunday], everyone pretty much had us written off. Even some of the guys on TV said there was no way we were going to come back. It was looking bleak, obviously, but we were fortunate enough to get some cautions and work on the car.

"Everything turned out great. Jimmie drove one helluva race and the pit crew did a great job with the adjustments, so I was real proud."

The run enabled Johnson to maintain his lead in the Nextel Cup standings, unofficially by 74 points over Sunday's race winner Matt Kenseth -- and left a lot of smiles in the No. 48 Chevrolet's garage stall post-race.

Johnson, in particular was relieved when he added his seventh top-10 in nine Dover starts, and his fourth in a row.

"We were good in all the practice sessions, but when the race started we were pretty far off," Johnson said. "My knowledge of the track really couldn't overcome how loose the racecar was, so we had to get to work on it and finally got the right adjustments on it."

Johnson did admit to seeing more darkness than light at the end of 400 laps on Dover's concrete jungle when he fell almost two laps behind.

"I was pretty panicked when I was already a lap down," Johnson said. "And Mark [Martin, the leader] was right behind me and getting ready to put me a second lap down, because I knew if I went two laps down a top 25 would have been out of the question."

Ironically, it was Johnson's own accident -- or an accident he was propelled into when he was clipped by rookie David Stremme at Lap 275 -- that Knaus cited as the turning point.

"Getting spun out was what probably helped us the most," Knaus said. "Because it brought out a caution and we were able to take more time to work on the car and make more adjustments than we would have been able to under normal racing conditions."

Johnson regained the lead lap when he stayed on-track and took up a position on the tail end of the lead lap on a caution at Lap 301. When the eighth of nine cautions fell at Lap 321, Johnson and Reed Sorenson moved around with the lead lap cars and the chase was on.

The final and most key strategic call came when Johnson stayed out, along with the other top-five cars, when the final caution waved at Lap 346.

"We have a good support staff," Knaus said, shrugging off most of the credit for the call.

"It was a lot of hard work today, bottom line," Johnson said. "It was just a long day of fighting and that's what I like to do."

Johnson restarted eighth and although only picked up two more spots in the last 52 laps. Still, it was worlds better than the team expected at the race's start.

Bottom line, the finish took what could have been a disastrous points day and turned it into a simple 35-point loss to Kenseth, who won for the second time this season. It had Johnson wishing he were back in the day, when Dover's races were 500 laps.

"We worked our way back up there," Johnson said. "I wish this was a 500-mile race and it may have been a victory for the Lowe's team."

The most circus-like aspect of Johnson's comeback came in the race's first 150 laps, when they had to share a pit stall with Morgan-McClure Motorsports, which earned the 43rd starting position.

Knaus and Morgan-McClure crew chief Chris Carrier added the final twist when the teams set up only one set of pit equipment, and the Hendrick team pitted both cars.

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After Hermie Sadler became the race's first DNF after running 136 laps, the Morgan-McClure crew set its pit up 23 stalls closer to the Nextel Cup garage, for the rest of the race.

"It was pretty bizarre, but it was cool, too," Knaus said with a smile. "Chris is an awesome, awesome guy and he and those guys were nothing but professional the entire time.

"They wanted to work with us and we wanted to work with them. We worked well together and I can't say enough about those guys."

Morgan-McClure's Scott Wimmer actually was outrunning Johnson when the first caution flew at Lap 37, so Knaus' crew pitted the No. 4 car first. They picked Wimmer up five spots in the pits on that stop.

Johnson's car chief, Ron Malec, who carries tires on pit stops, said he hadn't pitted another team's car since his days racing short tracks in the American Speed Association.

"I didn't realize how fast the turnaround was going to have to be on the pit stops," Malec said. "Especially on this mile track, which made it even worse than we thought.

"It was a little confusing at times, to tell you the truth, because when you got back up on the wall to do the second stop, your brain had to compute the adjustments we were going to do on our car and their car.

"In ASA was probably the last time I had to do something like that, and that was a long time ago. At this level of racing you wouldn't expect that, but you've got to deal with it and we actually came out pretty good today."

Knaus said he gained a new appreciation for how "the other half" in the Nextel Cup garage lives, but he said he hoped Sunday was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

"They have got to change this," Knaus said of Dover's 42-stall pit lane. "I feel sorry for and I never realized what these poor guys go through that qualify badly and have to share pits.

"That's just ridiculous to put somebody that far behind before they ever even start the race. That's got to change."