The magnitude of what Jimmie Johnson had achieved in winning his fifth consecutive championship on NASCAR's highest level didn't hit him as he hoisted the trophy overhead once again in South Florida. It didn't hit him as he went through the subsequent media tour, getting his photo taken with five silver Cups. It hit him on stage at the awards ceremony in Las Vegas, when host Mike Joy began pointing out all the past champions commemorated on banners hung around the room.

"That gave me goose bumps when he mentioned that," Johnson said. "I was like, wow. It was really hitting me then."

Johnson's fifth championship, a title that places him alongside only Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty as drivers who have won five or more championships in the sport's premier division, cements his legacy as one of the greatest ever. And yet, it wasn't won in typical Johnson style. He didn't dominate the season -- he didn't even dominate the Chase, winning only once during the 10-race playoff and trailing Denny Hamlin by 15 points entering the final event. There was no luxury of a triple-digit lead, as there had been so many times in the past. His No. 48 car wasn't the fastest it's ever been, and even needed a fuel gamble to stay in the hunt.

And yet, there he was again, celebrating for a fifth consecutive time on that stage at Homestead-Miami Speedway and again in Las Vegas, extending his unprecedented run of brilliance even in a season where other competitors saw him as vulnerable. When he clinched his latest crown with a clutch second-place run in the finale, beating Hamlin by 39 points, he screamed over the radio with a level of exuberance that surpassed even his first.

"This one, I think, this takes the lead," he said after that race. "Just the circumstances. It's not that the other Chases weren't competitive. We were stronger, I think, in the previous two Chases, at least. Maybe all four. But this one, I'm just so proud, because there were times on Saturday nights when we would get together and discuss our race car after practice, and we would have some tough conversations, and just struggled to get what we needed. ... So we have had the highs and lows of the Chase, but to have it all come around, and to look every single one of my crew guys in the eyes on that stage [at Vegas], there's a different feeling about it. It is so cool."

Not that it happened by accident, mind you. Johnson enjoyed a couple of personal breakthroughs this season, winning for the first time at Bristol and recording his first road-course victory at Sonoma. Still, six race wins was his lowest total in four years, and he endured two small slumps -- one in the spring, where he suffered through five consecutive double-digit finishes, and one in late summer, when he posted seven in a row. He and crew chief Chad Knaus struggled to find the right combination on intermediate tracks. At one point, he was ninth in the standings. All this while first Hamlin and then Kevin Harvick soared, giving the distinct impression that a regime was about to change.

But within Johnson, there was never any panic. "I've been here before," he said at Atlanta in September. "If you go back and look at some of the years, I have struggled through this part, and we go in and I watch the headlines read, 'What's wrong with the 48?' And we find our mojo. We're looking for it. We recognize that we haven't performed like we needed to on some tracks. We also know that we've had some bad luck that have led to bad finishes on others. We've always got to be optimistic, and that's where we are, and we know that we're working as hard as we can. At the end of the day as long as we know that we're working as hard as we can, sometimes that's all we can do."

Things began to come together that same weekend, with a third-place finish on an Atlanta track similar to many of those Johnson would see in the Chase. After a rough start in the playoff opener, he won at Dover, and finished no worse than third the next three weeks. He was back in the points lead, and everything seemed routine -- until Texas, where Hamlin won to seize the top spot, and Johnson suffered through a series of slow pit stops that led Knaus to swap the No. 48 crew with that of Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon in the middle of the race.

Suddenly, everything had changed. The next week at Phoenix, Johnson seemed on the verge of getting blown out -- Hamlin roared to the front, and the No. 48 car just didn't have the speed to keep up. Hamlin was threatening to go up by 78 points or more, all but burying the four-time champion, when the event turned into a fuel-mileage race. Johnson stayed out, Hamlin didn't, and just like that the margin was whittled down to 15. Johnson climbed out of his car smiling and joking, as if he had won the title that day instead of nearly losing it. He carried that loose attitude with him all the way to Miami, where he finished the job.

"We had fun with it," he said. "We didn't have anything to lose, in a sense. There was plenty of stress, plenty of pressure, but in a different form. We didn't have the points lead to protect. We had the fear of losing the streak and some other things we wanted to accomplish as a team. I've gone into Homestead with triple-digit leads and been lacking sleep the entire weekend down there. It's a different mindset to protect, and we didn't have to protect. So we had a lot more fun with it."

In the final race, Hamlin endured one problem after another while Johnson never wavered. And suddenly he was back on stage at the banquet once again, another year added to his banner hanging in the ballroom, his legacy growing more and more. For Johnson, that mystical record of seven championships is out there, waiting to be equaled or surpassed. But in winning five titles, he's found something else -- fulfillment.

"For me, I do feel satisfied. But I have never set marks for myself that I wanted X amount of championships or wins and stuff like that," he said. "I mean, since I was kid, what's drawn me to racing is the feeling inside of me, the passion I have for the sport, the feeling I have while competing and doing what I do in a car, on a bike, whatever it's been. I guess someday when that goes away, I'll stop. But I've always been a guy that when I focused on something and I commit to doing it, I'm going to give 100 percent. As long as I'm in that car, I'm going to apply myself and do everything I can for the team, and hopefully be competitive enough to win races and compete for championships. ... If it all ended today, I would be extremely satisfied and proud of what I accomplished, but I still have that desire to work, do my job and compete."

Video: Watch Johnson's awards ceremony speech