A disappointing qualifying effort of 36th forced Johnson to drive his No. 48 Lowe’s Chevy through nearly the entire field in Sunday’s rain-delayed Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond International Raceway, making his third-place finish all the more dramatic — perhaps too dramatic.

"We’ve got two wins and we’re making the most out of these poor starts and poor pit road picks,” Johnson said. "We’ve got to get better on Fridays. I really think our race car, we worked hard to make it last in the long run and with all the long runs that we had, I was able to get through the field and get this Lowe’s Pro Service Chevy up front.

"Those last few restarts I was able to hang on and duke it out with those guys and get a nice top-three finish.”

Johnson has had four starts of 20th place or worse in nine races this season, but interestingly, they have produced some of his best finishes. He started 37th in Atlanta and ended up in Victory Lane. He started 20th in Phoenix two weeks later and rallied to finish 11th.

Johnson qualified 28th at Bristol, Tennessee, just last week and finished a head-shaking runner-up.

Clearly the cars have speed and Johnson’s not a six-time champ for nothing, but the team is clearly focused on improving their starting positions.

"We were fast on Friday; we just didn’t qualify well,” Johnson’s crew chief Chad Knaus said after Sunday’s race. "I don’t know. There’s rumors of some inconsistent sets of tires. We don’t know if maybe we got a goofy set of tires or something just wasn’t matched up quite right, so I don’t know.

"Bristol, I didn’t expect to qualify very well anyway, so we kind of throw that one out. But I really thought we’d qualify in the top 10 here. Unfortunately we didn’t, but we rolled on through there."

Sunday’s determined effort was Johnson’s third consecutive top-three including a win at Texas and the runner-up at Bristol, and he sits fourth in the driver standings — a two-time winner and 25 points behind second place Joey Logano.

“We had a great race car and I really felt like that was the case on Friday, except for our qualifying lap,” Johnson said. "I don’t know what happened on Friday and in general, I’m not the best qualifier. So Fridays, we’ve got to get those better in order to really win as often as we’d like to."

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NASCAR officials said that Saturday night’s decision was made after assessing weather forecasts and consulting with government and law enforcement officials. Unlike last weekend’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway, forecasts did not provide any suitable window of opportunity for precipitation to end and to dry the track.

Rain began around noon Saturday and picked up intensity shortly before the driver/crew chief meeting at 5 p.m. – two hours before the green flag.

"I know it’s a rough day," RIR track president Dennis Bickmeier said during the meeting, acknowledging the threat of delays. "Thank you for hanging with us."

And while the rainout is aggravating and inconvenient the drivers have come to accept it as a part of the job. Persistent showers last week at Bristol Motor Speedway meant several race stoppages before the checkered flag finally fell almost 10 hours later.

"It is tough a lot of times because you have your whole routine in the morning you go through with appearances and drivers meeting and do all your stuff and then you sit and wait," pole-sitter Joey Logano said. "At that point you start to relax again. It just changes a little bit. It is like any other athlete. You get in your mode and do the same thing every week before the race or before a game and when it rains it kind of throws you off a little bit.

"Usually by the time you get back in the car, they give you enough warning the race is about to start and you get your head back straight again and off you go. Usually it isn’t that big of an effect for what we do."

Knowing that it’s going to rain, however, doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to prepare for the race. Moving the race from night to day or day to night creates an extra challenge for crew chiefs.

"Even if it does rain and I know there’s a possibility I guess it would be a day race which might change it a little bit." last week’s Bristol winner Matt Kenseth said. "It might bring it more back to your notes for [practice] today than what your typical adjustments are for night time.

"Like I said, for me I don’t have a really good handle or feel on how this track changes from day to night during a race and all that, so [crew chief] Jason [Ratcliff] probably does a lot better than me.

"For me, it’s always kind of a guess. I’m not sure what I’m going to get when the race starts. Whenever I’m pretty confident I know what the track is going to do, it seems like my car goes the other way. Just kind of leave that up to Jason and the guys to figure out."

From a practical level, Sprint Cup Series Managing Director Richard Buck told the drivers there would be a competition caution on Lap 50 of the 400-lap event. The race would be legal with 201 laps completed, but NASCAR always tries to finish its races, as it did last week at Bristol, including a green-white-checkered finish after a red flag for rain.

And the Air Titan track drying machines have greatly shortened the time it takes to get the track race ready.

"When this place gets the rubber washed off of it, it is really, really fast for a little bit," second-year driver Kyle Larson said. "But then it wears out tires quicker. You have to think about that kind of stuff. I’m sure we will have a competition caution at some point so you have to be patient at the beginning of the race. And the track will change a whole bunch throughout the whole race."

NASCAR.com’s Zack Albert contributed to this report.

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