Texas the track Johnson took command of Chase

Jimmie Johnson didn't need a phone booth to change into his superhero's cape. At 190 mph, he wasn't going to be able to pull over and use it anyway.

If there was a moment in time that defined this year's Chase for the Nextel Cup, it came in the closing stages of the Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, when Johnson affirmed his claim to the title in a thrilling side-by-duel duel with Matt Kenseth that resulted in Johnson's third win over a four-race victory streak.

With little fanfare before his entry to Cup and now with back-to-back championships, David Caraviello says Jimmie Johnson may be the sport's most impressive discovery.

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Combined with Jeff Gordon's seventh-place finish, Johnson built an insurmountable lead on his way to his second consecutive Nextel Cup championship, and reaffirmed that success is one byproduct of positive momentum.

"It's a very powerful tool, obviously as long as you're able to keep it in check," crew chief Chad Knaus said after the race. "Momentum can just as much be an enemy as it can be an asset because you'll see guys go out there and they will start to gain momentum, get a little cocky, a little lax and have a mistake.

"I think our team does a good job of taking momentum and turning it into a good thing and using it to almost like an energizer. When you go to the racetrack feeling comfortable with the decisions that you make, it makes me feel more comfortable when I'm making the pit calls on the pit box that the guys actually have good pit stops, so it boosts everybody's energy level up a good bit and obviously with the way Jimmie has driven the last few weeks, it helps."

With 34 laps remaining, Knaus decided to put four fresh tires on Johnson's No. 48 Chevrolet, while Kenseth and several of the other leaders stopped for a two-tire change. And at that point, Knaus had only one piece of advice for his driver.

"When we stopped to take those tires there, I said, 'Man, ready to pull out your cape?'" Knaus said. "He said, 'Man, I've been waiting all night.'"

Immediately following the restart, Kenseth passed Ryan Newman for the lead, but once Johnson cleared the rest of the challengers, Kenseth's advantage soon dwindled to a few car-lengths. Lap after lap, Johnson tried the low groove but couldn't make it stick under Kenseth, as the two put their cars in the knife-edge of disaster, time and time again.

"If you saw on television, I was dead sideways, Matt was sideways, and he was crowding me and trying to move him up a little bit and trying to do all that at 190 miles an hour around here, it's pretty intense," Johnson said.

Finally, with the two racing toward the white flag, Johnson was able to get by Kenseth's No. 17 Ford for good.

"My four tires were better than his two, that's for sure," Johnson said. "But I couldn't clear him and he did the right thing to slow me down and keep me from passing. I knew if I could clear him, I could check out and get away from him, but I couldn't get the pass. I tried twice and the second time I got it."

What might have been surprising at that point was how hard Johnson was racing for the win. First place obviously meant 15 additional points -- but at the same time, had he crashed, it might have signaled the end of his Chase chances with two races remaining.

"I felt comfortable racing Matt," Johnson said. "I knew he was going to do everything he could to keep me from getting by, but he's not going to run into me or side-draft me and make me get into the corner and get my car loose. He's going to race my car and he certainly did that and fortunately I was able to blow by him at the end.

"At times I thought about the points, but Jeff, I knew he was getting better as the night went on and I knew I needed every point I could get and I had to go for it. That's really the position that Jeff and I are both in, in the remaining races. Every spot counts. And you've got to go for it and that's what I was doing tonight."

Amazingly, Gordon never finished worse than 11th in the 10 Chase races. But he couldn't hold off Johnson, who wiped out a 68-point lead constructed from Gordon's back-to-back victories at Talladega and Charlotte.

Gordon said he could only control the fortunes of his No. 24 Chevrolet team.

"All we can do is go out there and perform the best we possibly can just like we did tonight and hope that it's enough to be ahead of the guys we are racing, like Jimmie," Gordon said after the race. "We can't control when they're doing what they're doing.

"They're doing a great job. And you can't take anything away from that. It's hard for anybody right now to step up and beat them, let alone us. If it comes down to that then, I don't know. It's going to be tough to beat them."

At the time, Gordon might not have realized how prophetic that statement would turn out to be.

Clint Bowyer, the surprise of the Chase, had stayed in the thick of the battle between the two Hendrick teammates for the first seven races. But a pair of green-flag pit stops at Texas doomed any chance of a title for Bowyer.

"I felt a vibration on Lap 247 and thought it was a loose right rear wheel but turned out to be a loose left rear wheel," he said. "We pitted twice and lost two laps, and there just wasn't enough race left to get track position back."

The other nine Chase drivers were virtually eliminated within the first four races.

Kenseth, who wound up fourth overall, had five consecutive top-five finishes -- including a win in the season-finale at Homestead -- to end the year, but back-to-back 35th-place efforts at Dover and Kansas wrecked any chance of a second championship

Kansas was the end of the road for fifth-place Kyle Busch, who wound up 41st after getting collected by Dale Earnhardt Jr. At that point, he was 136 points behind.

Sixth-place Tony Stewart might have had a commanding lead in the points and be on his way to a third championship after Kansas, had Mother Nature cooperated that day. Heavy rains stopped the race past the halfway mark, with Stewart -- who had gambled on fuel -- in the lead. But NASCAR officials were able to dry the track, allowing the race to be resumed.

Stewart then suffered fender damage in a multi-car accident, and things went from bad to worse when the tire finally blew, sending the No. 20 Chevrolet into the wall after contact with Kurt Busch. Stewart would end up 39th -- and never recover.

Busch rallied to finish 11th at Kansas -- and seventh overall in the standings -- but his Chase was doomed by a 25th-place finish at New Hampshire, followed by a 29th-place effort at Dover.

Jeff Burton, who built a big lead in the 2006 Chase only to have it slip away, was also eliminated early when he finished 36th at Kansas with fuel pressure issues and 43rd at Talladega following a mid-race accident.

Kansas was also unkind to Busch Series champion Carl Edwards, who crashed and finished 38th on Saturday -- and then promptly crashed and finished 37th on Sunday.

Tire issues were Kevin Harvick's bugaboo in the 2007 Chase. Potential top-10 finishes went by the wayside for the Daytona 500 winner when he had to make unscheduled pit stops in three of the first four Chase races because of concerns over potentially flat rubber.

Martin Truex Jr. was another Chase contender who had his championship chances thwarted at Kansas, the victim of the big wreck that ultimately sidelined Stewart. A 38th-place finish left Truex 158 points behind after three races, and set off a damaging streak of five consecutive finishes outside of the top 10.

Denny Hamlin was running sixth at Dover when he crashed into the lapped car of Kyle Petty, starting his downward spiral. After finished 38th there, Hamlin put together just three more top-10 finishes the rest of the season.