"I’m really happy to run as well as we have this season," Earnhardt said. "This has been one of the best years I’ve had, certainly the best year I’ve had working with Hendrick (Motorsports, which he joined for the 2008 season). Just want to give my team a lot of credit. Steve Letarte (crew chief), my engineers, did just an amazing job providing these good cars every week. I’m hoping next year we continue that trend and that trajectory and get a shot at winning a championship. I think we can do it."
 
Earnhardt led 28 laps, including four of the final 30, Sunday and battled Hamlin and Kenseth in the top three over the closing miles.
 
"We came here and tested," he said. "Really liked how that worked out. Worked on the car real hard Saturday. Worked on it real smart. Felt like we had a car that was going to come to us, and it surely did. We weren’t that great at the start of the race, but as the race wore on, the thing really came to life."
 
The same could be said of Earnhardt’s season. After some tough going in the spring and summer, the 88 team became a force to be reckoned with in the Chase period. Only a blown motor — and a 35th-place finish — in the Chase opener at Chicago stained the closing run.
 
What sparked the surge?
 
"I’ve asked Steve over and over, asked my car chief, Jason (Burdett), over and over, and asked everybody on the team at least once or twice what we’re doing different," Earnhardt said. "They said they’re not doing anything different. You know, I really don’t know why. I have the same feeling — like our cars are way faster. We have been more competitive, I think, not as a company — I just think the 88 team has really stepped it up.
 
"But each year, like I said, we’ve gotten better. When we first started working together, it’s easy to forget about all this, but when me and Steve started working together, we were working our guts out to finish in the top 10. Each year it’s kind of gotten easier to run a little better."

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"Yes! Yes! Yes!" Johnson shouted at the checkered flag, after clinching the title by 19 points over Kenseth. "Thank you, guys. What a race team. You guys are amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

The response of crew chief Chad Knaus echoed the thoughts of many: "You’re the best out there, buddy. You’re the best out there."

It’s all remarkable, really, from the way Johnson makes it look so easy, to the fact that this former motocross racer from Southern California even made it here to begin with. And yet, Johnson goes out there and just glides his vehicle around the race track, his car control so complete it looks like he’s leading it by a string.

He’s not, of course. But it sure seemed that way two weekends ago at Texas, where Johnson led 255 laps in an effort that awakened memories of his five-year championship run, and wrestled control of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup in the process. And it seemed that way again for much of Sunday, when Kenseth led the most laps and threw everything he had at Johnson, but the champion-to-be made one smooth circuit after another and turned in one of his best performances ever at Homestead to keep the points gap intact.

There was a single hold-your-breath moment, on a Lap 193 restart when slow cars at the front had many vehicles wiggling on the edge of control, and a chain reaction led to Johnson banging into Kenseth from behind. The contact knocked in a fender on the No. 48 car, raised concerns of a tire going down, and dumped Johnson from eighth place to 23rd. Suddenly Johnson’s margin was down to 14 points, and in danger of being whittled down even more if the damaged fender necessitated an extra pit stop.

It didn’t. Paul Menard‘s car blew a rear tire to bring out a caution, the No. 48 crew pulled out the fender on the ensuing pit stop, and crisis was averted. "I knew our car was plenty good enough to drive back up there," Knaus said. "Wish we could have raced for it … but we’ll take what we got. We got a pretty cool trophy."

"It got us mired back in traffic, which made the last 50 laps kind of interesting," Johnson added. "But we still had an awesome race car that got the job done."

From there it was a coronation, Johnson maintaining his position and ticking off the laps, all of it a mere Sunday drive compared to what it had taken to get there. Johnson is the living, breathing intersection of talent and perseverance, someone who in his early days traded business cards with everyone he met, and would follow up by having his aunt type up letters that he’d stick in the mail. He made phone calls, he sent fax messages — people did that back in the day — he networked every chance he had.

"I didn’t have the cash, the funds, the sponsorship, really the means, especially in California, to go stock-car racing," Johnson recalled. "So anybody I could meet on the East Coast, I just wore them out."

There was no easy way in for Johnson, who didn’t come up the son of an established NASCAR racer like the two seven-time champions he one day hopes to join. Who knows what might have happened had Hendrick Motorsports not decided to expand its facility, and add a fourth driver in the process. Who knows what might have happened had Johnson not been testing his Herzog Motorsports car at Darlington Raceway the same day Jeff Gordon was there, giving him an opportunity to be impressed by this unknown making such clean lines around such a cantankerous track.

Who knows what might have happened had Johnson balked when former Lowe’s chairman Bob Tillman, wearing of never reaching Victory Lane in so many years with Mike Skinner, asked him, blankly — can you win? Johnson was well beyond business cards and fax messages then. He said yes. The rest has been history, even if the driver himself remains stunned by how it all unfolded.

"What he saw in me, and what Jeff Gordon saw in me, and what Rick Hendrick did at the time, I have no clue," Johnson remembered. "I really don’t. I mean, I could barely run in the top 10 in Nationwide. The Nationwide win came a year later, after I signed a contract with them."

The key may very well have been Ricky Hendrick, who saw something in Johnson and pitched the unheralded driver to his father. "My son told me he was going to be a superstar," Rick said. The younger Hendrick never had the opportunity to witness that reality, perishing along with nine others in the crash of a company airplane in 2004. But his instinct, and the transformative impact it would prove to have on his father’s race team, is further justified with every trophy Johnson collects.

"We liked Jimmie a lot. He was just such a classy guy. We felt like he was part of the family," Rick Hendrick said this week. "Then when Jeff raced against him at Michigan, Jeff said that he was special, he had a lot of talent. We took a chance. We had no idea. I mean, there was no reason, no way to look at him that he could be that good. We didn’t see what we saw in Jeff Gordon early on when he was racing in the Nationwide Series. You thought it was there, but you didn’t know it was going to be this good."

No one did. Johnson, who has blossomed from an unknown into a six-time series champion, will likely go down as the greatest talent discovery in NASCAR history. One day, he may very well go down as the greatest driver as well.

"I have six. We’ll see if I can get seven," Johnson said Sunday night after climbing from his car. "Time will tell. I think we need to save the argument until I hang up the helmet."

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"I don’t even know where to start," Johnson said after the race. "I’m at a loss for words, but I’m so proud and so thankful for this opportunity at Hendrick Motorsports. I’m thankful that Jeff Gordon and Rick Hendrick gave me this opportunity back in 2002.

"This sport is about people, and our people at Hendrick Motorsports — especially on this 48 car — rose up and got the job done. I’m so thankful to be able to drive for this race team and so honored and so excited to have a ‘six-pack.’ "

Hamlin won for the first time this season, the second time at Homestead and the 23rd time in his career. The driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota has won at least one race in each of his eight full seasons in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. 

As elated as he was with the victory, Hamlin took time to acknowledge the excellence of Johnson and his No. 48 team. Johnson’s average finish in the 10 Chase races was 5.1.

"I think they do a great job of being consistent," Hamlin said. "Really, I’d say with everyone else in the Chase, you can almost count on them having one bad race. The 48, they just never have that one bad race. I don’t know how to explain it, but they just don’t make any mistakes. You have to beat him on performance. To do that, that’s really hard.

"Unfortunately, we’re racing during the Jimmie Johnson Era. We’re just unlucky in that sense. I think being out there and racing with him, I can say that I think he’s the best that there ever was."

Martin Truex Jr. completed his tenure at Michael Waltrip Racing with a fourth-place run, one spot ahead of teammate Clint Bowyer. Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch, Joey Logano, Johnson and Kevin Harvick rounded out the top 10. 

Johnson’s path to the title was far from easy. Moments after a restart on Lap 194, Paul Menard rammed the back of Johnson’s No. 48 Chevrolet as the outside line checked up. The impact jerked Johnson’s car sideways, but the five-time champion was able to regain control and keep the car off the outside wall. 

His momentum sapped, however, Johnson plummeted to 23rd in the running order, the precise finishing position he needed to secure his sixth championship. Over the next nine laps, Johnson recovered to 16th and drove the No. 48 out of the danger zone. 

From that point on, he advanced as high as sixth before finishing ninth, and the sixth NASCAR Sprint Cup title was his. 

"I had contact from behind that pushed me into the 20 (Kenseth), and both of us were out of control and sliding toward the outside fence at that point," Johnson said. "I didn’t know what to think. That got us mired back in traffic and made the last 50 laps kind of interesting.

"We still had an awesome race car and got the job done."

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