Title didn't keep Johnson from mixing it up at end

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Rick Hendrick nearly cued the radio and ordered Jimmie Johnson to back off.

He watched one of his leading Nextel Cup championship contenders duel with Matt Kenseth over the final laps Sunday night, slipping and sliding around Texas Motor Speedway on two new tires. He knew his other driver in the title chase, Jeff Gordon, had a seventh-place finish secured. But what to do about Johnson, who would be the points leader at the end of the evening, but was racing with all the abandon of a teenager on a dirt track?

Lap-by-Lap

Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth staged a classic battle in the closing laps at Texas, with Johnson making the winning pass with two to go.

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"I was thinking, 'We've got an awful lot at stake here, and Jeff was running seventh, and we don't need this,'" the NASCAR team owner said. "But I felt like Jimmie was under control. I was nervous and wanting to hit the button. I was thinking it."

He didn't need to. The vehicular street fight between the two former champions produced the most electric moments of an otherwise long and caution-plagued Dickies 500 (watch video). Johnson, even with a title at stake, didn't back off. Kenseth, knowing he was racing the potential points leader, didn't let the No. 48 car go. The mutual respect showed in how cleanly they raced one another, swapping the lead and sometimes going sideways, but both finishing with their racecars intact.

Johnson prevailed, notching his third consecutive win and ninth of the year, the most by any driver in NASCAR's top series since Gordon compiled 13 in 1998. He also overtook his Hendrick Motorsports teammate for the points lead, going from nine down to 30 up on Gordon with only two starts remaining in the 10-event Chase.

"It came down to a full-blown brawl with Matt, in a good way," Johnson said. "I don't mean that in a bad way. We both wanted that win really bad, and I think it was evident in how close the racecars were. It was a lot of fun. I knew I didn't have to worry about him putting me in a bad position because of the championship, and he also knew I wouldn't come in there and clean him out and take out both of us racing for a shot at the win. So it was really good racing."

It was, and it was somewhat unexpected given all Johnson had at stake. A few times in those dramatic final laps, he backed out. But then stuck the nose of his No. 48 car right back in there again, eventually muscling by Kenseth with two to go for the win. The Roush Fenway driver didn't expect anything less.

"I think the only time that would change is if he was at [the season finale in] Homestead and had a 50-point lead or something like that," Kenseth said. "Maybe he would have backed out of it and pulled behind me. We've raced together for a long time, and I think he was pretty confident that I wasn't going to wreck him. We raced each other really hard. I didn't give him extra room at all, and I thought of the points thing and thought maybe he would back out of it. At one point he backed out of it with five to go, but he was just a lot faster."

Both drivers experienced brief periods where it seemed they were going to lose it and wind up in the wall. Kenseth especially pulled out of one dastardly slide, righting the No. 17 before he and Johnson made contact. Somehow, they stayed off one another, and kept it clean until Johnson won by .944 seconds.

"I felt like I was sideways the whole time," Kenseth said. "Really, I can't remember. The one time that sticks out is when we were side-by-side off of [Turn] 4, and I just about spun out, and that probably would have been bad because I was looking at his right-rear quarterpanel. That probably would have been really bad for him and really bad for me. So I'm really glad I was able to get that up and keep rolling. I was just driving over my head to get back as far up as I could."

The championship was always there, in the back of Johnson's mind. But so was the victory. His aggressiveness paid off -- the winning pass on Kenseth added an extra 15 points to his lead over Gordon heading to Phoenix next week.

"It enters my mind, but I feel like I was doing a good job of balancing those emotions in the car," Johnson said of the title. "When I got inside of Matt and I tried for a lap or two to get by. I'd actually let him go if I felt like he was crowding me, then I would try to get back inside him. I tried to re-check those wheels and get back after him."

It helped that he was racing against Kenseth, a driver who is well-respected among his peers for keeping it clean.

"There are only a handful of guys that I would feel comfortable racing that hard with at the end, being in the position we're in," Johnson said. "So there aren't many, and Matt is certainly one. I've had a lot of great racing with Matt over the years, and I think we both have respect for one another. We can get in there and do it all without running each other over."