Johnson dominates to win Martinsville, extend lead

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- You can start engraving the championship trophy.

At the same track where he started his phenomenal run to the title last year, Jimmie Johnson distanced himself from his closest pursuers on Sunday, winning the Tums QuikPak 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Martinsville Speedway.

Johnson won in a cakewalk, leading 339 of 504 laps. His No. 48 Chevrolet was so good on short runs, and so strong off the corners, runner-up Dale Earnhardt Jr. couldn't mount a charge during the green-white-checkered-flag finish that took the race four laps past its scheduled length (watch video).

"I didn't have a good enough drive up off the corner to catch Jimmie," said Earnhardt, who gained one position to ninth in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings but fell to 379 points behind his Hendrick Motorsports teammate. "They had such an excellent racecar. I did the best I could to protect my position.

"I didn't have anything for Jimmie. His car was so awesome. We were spinning the tires up off the corner, and that's where we got beat."

Even with the short green-flag run at the end, Johnson stretched his advantage to .708 seconds at the finish. Carl Edwards ran third, followed by Jeff Gordon, Denny Hamlin and Casey Mears, as Hendrick placed all four of its cars in the top six.

Greg Biffle recovered a lap he lost during an off-sequence green-flag pit stop on Lap 248 and finished 12th to move into second place in the Chase standings. But it's second and long: Biffle is 149 points behind Johnson with four races left in the season.

Penalized one lap for pitting outside his box late in the race, Jeff Burton came home 17th and dropped one position to third in the standings, 152 points behind the leader. Despite his career-best finish at Martinsville, Edwards is fourth, 198 points behind Johnson.

Biffle, Burton and Edwards are chasing an abundantly confident No. 48 team heading for tracks where Johnson has excelled in the past. After last year's victory at Martinsville, Johnson won consecutive races at Atlanta, Texas and Phoenix to seize control of the Chase entering the season finale at Homestead-Miami.

This season is different. Johnson already has control heading to Atlanta, and the attitude of the team was evident in crew chief Chad Knaus' words as Johnson crossed the finish line.

"That's what you call points racing -- getting them all," Knaus said.

Don't expect Johnson to try to sit on his lead.

"I think we really need to go out and do the same stuff," said Johnson, who won his sixth race of the year and the 39th of his career. "We can't lose this points lead. We've got to go out and swing at it -- and that's what we're best at.

"Truly, we feel confident at all the tracks left on the schedule."

Besides tying Tim Flock for 15th in career wins, Johnson moved one step closer to a third consecutive Cup title, a feat accomplished previously only by Cale Yarborough (1976-1978).

"[Sunday] was big step in the right direction," Johnson said. "As long as I can stay scared and on my heels and worried about losing this thing, the better this team is going to be. If we start getting comfortable and complacent, we're going to stub our toes and we're going to make mistakes."

Notes: Kyle Busch's season continued to unravel. With a succession of maladies at Martinsville, the former top seed in the Chase finished 29th, seven laps down, and dropped to 12th in the standings. ... Busch's teammate Tony Stewart fared little better. Forced to the pits twice with flat tires, Stewart ran 26th, four laps down and dropped to eighth in points, 338 back and all but eliminated from the championship equation. ... Johnson's victory was his fifth at Martinsville. He has finished in the top 10 in 13 of 14 starts at the .526-mile short track.