Pit-road penalty not able to tarnish Johnson's Chase

HAMPTON, Ga. -- Carl Edwards is wrong. Jimmie Johnson isn't magic. He has the Midas touch.

When told in Victory Lane that Johnson somehow rallied from running 30th after a rare speeding penalty to finish second in Sunday's Pep Boys Auto 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Edwards was first surprised and then almost accepted it as a given.

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"Are you kidding me?" Edwards asked his interviewer. "Man, you've rained on my parade all day. I could have done without that one. ... Man, Jimmie is magic."

More like 24 karat gold.

"I'm just as shocked as he is," Johnson said. "I thought we were going to finish ninth or 10th [Sunday]. That last caution came out there and I give [crew chief] Chad Knaus credit for making the call and playing the strategy right. It worked out well for us."

Johnson must have felt like he stole a second-place finish Sunday. But the heist was certainly a team effort.

Needing a perfect pit stop to get in position to get the free pass, the No. 48 crew pulled it off. Not merely content to finish in the top 10, Knaus called for four fresh tires, and Johnson "drove the crap out of the car" over the final eight laps to charge his way through the field. Even Denny Hamlin seemed to be touched in some way, somehow saving his sideways car in the final corner to keep from crashing into Johnson.

While it seemed like Chase contenders Greg Biffle and Jeff Burton attended the school of hard knocks on Sunday, Johnson turned apparent misfortune into his own personal vault at Fort Knox (watch video).

The championship chasers had a glimmer of hope when Johnson locked up the brakes at the entrance to pit road on Lap 90 during green-flag stops and was assessed a pass-through penalty on the next lap. That put him 30th -- one lap down -- and for the first time, gave the unusual impression that perhaps the No. 48 team isn't invincible.

But that glimmer turned out to be only fool's gold. Faced with their first misstep of the Chase, Johnson and Knaus quickly figured out a new strategy and immediately implemented it.

"That was getting in position to be the first car one lap down so we could get the [free pass]," Johnson said. "So ... we come to pit road and I think I was the ninth or 10th car on pit road, and my guys killed the stop. And I came out with the lead [as the first lapped car] and we caught the caution."

After a great stop on Lap 111 that placed the No. 48 at the front of the lead-lap cars, Johnson then earned the free pass 20 laps later when Kasey Kahne spun.

"From that point on, it was just about staying on the lead lap, because we were starting so far back in traffic," Johnson said. "It was tough to get going and fighting all the lapped cars. We got about halfway through the field and I was really trying to get a top-five and that point, we kind of stalled out in seventh and were just kind of riding there. Then everything went crazy at the end and we had the right strategy at the end."

The right strategy turned out to be Knaus' decision to parlay a certain top-10 finish to something better, by bringing Johnson down pit road with less than 10 laps remaining. But in hindsight, the decision wasn't that risky.

"We really had the perfect storm come together," Johnson said. "You had the leaders, and there's no way they're going to pit. [Then] a group of three or four guys that just got tires a couple of laps before. They don't want to give up any track position. And then myself.

"Tires make such a difference here that I was able just to get smoking around the outside and go."

Johnson picked off three cars as soon as the green flew on Lap 318, roared past teammates Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon to claim sixth with five laps remaining, and just kept charging his way to the front.

Kurt Busch? No problem. Kyle Busch. Same thing. Matt Kenseth. Piece of cake. And in the final corner, Johnson moved to the outside of Hamlin, who bobbled but held onto his Toyota long enough for the No. 48 to squeeze by.

So Johnson's point lead -- which was 149 going into the day -- ballooned to 183 over Edwards. Still, Johnson, who led 28 of the first 45 laps, admitted that there's no advantage to playing it safe at this point of the season.

"You have no clue what's going to happen next week, the last three races," Johnson said. "You've got to go. You just can't sit still and be content with fifth, sixth, seventh. You don't know what kind of luck you're going to have [in the future]."

And the golden boy from the Golden State keeps coming up golden.

"I looked up there on the scoreboard and he was running seventh, eighth, ninth there the second half of the race," Edwards said. "That's pretty amazing. He's a heck of a competitor. He's one of the first guys to come and greet you when you win. In a way, that just makes him harder to beat."

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.

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• Video: Johnson talks about his second-place finish