Contenders find comfort zones amid title furor

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Throughout his four-year run atop NASCAR's premier series, Jimmie Johnson has always had a distraction. At first, it was golf. Then it was fitness training. Now, it's a 4-month-old in diapers.

"I've found a lot of great experiences and time and distraction in a very positive way has been my daughter. To spend time at home, to figure out how to make bottles, how to feed, all the things that go along with being a parent, has been an amazing distraction for me," said Johnson, whose wife, Chandra, gave birth to daughter, Genevieve Marie, on July 7.

"At the end of the day, you have to make sure you come to this race track recharged and focused, and [with] really nothing present on your mind. And the way this year has gone, I've shown up at the track in a great space mentally, refreshed and ready to go. I'm very fortunate my daughter sleeps though the night -- hopefully that continues through the Chase, especially. But that's the goal of any athlete, to show up for your race, for us, or your game, with a clear mind and ready to go, and I've been able to kind of find things over the years. It's been different each year, and it's been working well."

As his four consecutive Cup championships would attest. Johnson has been through this process enough times now that he seems totally at ease with the environment, to the point where he even lost track of time assembling a crib on the opening morning of the Chase way back in New Hampshire. But this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway, things are different. For the first time in two years, he doesn't have the advantage of a triple-digit points lead as the playoff enters its final phase. With three races to go, he's in a real battle for the first time since he trailed Jeff Gordon by nine entering this point in the 2007 season.

And yet, Johnson appeared as nonchalant as ever on Friday morning in Fort Worth, even though he, Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick were separated by just 38 points as the third-to-last race weekend of the NASCAR season got under way.

"I don't necessarily feel more pressure," he said. "I think I feel more pressure trying to defend something. And with the small margin we have, it's really easy what I need to do -- I need to win the race. I need to finish ahead of the 11 and the 29, and I think that's going to mean winning the race. So the week has been really easy for me, whereas previous years coming to Texas, the mind has been more in a defensive mode, trying to protect, worrying about things. It's all offense right now. So I feel really good about things, and feel less pressure this Texas race than I did last year."

So much of this championship race has become dealing with the pressure, of preventing small mistakes from becoming big ones and not becoming consumed by the bottomless pit of what-ifs that can turn any competitor into a nervous wreck. And yet, all three of the drivers remaining in this title hunt have found ways to deal with the mental demands of their position, whether that's warming up a bottle, playing softball, or losing themselves in the minutiae of a race weekend. If you're searching for anxiety, the top of the standings is the wrong place to find it. Even Hamlin, the youngest of the three title contenders and someone experiencing the heat of a Cup championship run for the first time, seems sanguine.

"I find myself not even thinking about it until I get to the race track," said the winner of the Texas spring race, which erased any doubts as to whether his surgically repaired knee would hamper his title run. "I think that's why I've been so relaxed this year is, doing things outside of racing during the week and putting stuff behind me whenever things don't go well. Talladega, literally, when I got on the plane and got home, I was done with it. I was disappointed in our finish there, but I would have harped on that for a week or so in the past. This year, I haven't even thought about it until I got off the plane this morning and started driving this race track. It's probably been a good tool for us and kept us relaxed, not talking about it so much." (Continued)