NASCAR Johnson drives to the top of the standings

Jimmie Johnson shows that he is no longer an also-ran on the Nextel Cup circuit.
WINSTON-SALEM JOURNAL
DOVER, Del. -- Maybe Jimmie Johnson's downhill slide is over.
With Kurt Busch 170 points down after two straight weeks of problems and Tony Stewart making a rare stumble to lose the Chase for the Championship lead, Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus are sitting pretty atop the standings.
Johnson has been near the top of the points race nearly every week since his rookie season four years ago, so he's not likely to be overwhelmed by his status. As he showed with a string of four wins in five races down the stretch last fall, he's a driver to be reckoned with.
Maybe this Chase won't be a Roush Racing runaway after all.
Two of Jack Roush's five drivers in the Chase actually took themselves out of Sunday's MBNA 400. First, Matt Kenseth tried to baby a flat tire, rather than risk the wrath of crew chief Robbie Reiser by pitting under green without a real flat, and when the tire blew, he slammed into the wall. That apparently left pieces of his brake rotor in the groove, which teammate Busch ran over, blowing a tire.
By the time that Busch got the tire changed and had served a penalty for speeding off pit road, he was four laps down. Busch, who had dominated the race until the final minutes, stormed away from the track after the race with little comment.
Had to scramble
Johnson has been an also-ran since a run-in at Indianapolis with inspectors. But Sunday he was among the top four all afternoon, though he had to scramble to keep Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Busch from stealing his thunder. In fact, when Johnson had to chop low to block a Busch passing attempt in the closing laps, it looked for a moment as if the two might crash, which would have given the race to Rusty Wallace.
Kyle Busch has been criticized this season for overly aggressive driving, but Johnson said he wasn't worried.
"All you can ask for is just enough room to race," he said. "Everybody gets aggressive at times. I felt comfortable leading the race, knowing my teammate was back there.
"If it was somebody else, I don't think I would have had the same comfort. But I didn't have any concerns over any aggressive driving."
Looked like Roush day
For much of the 31/2-hour race, it looked like another Roush day.
"We started the race off great and led some laps, but the middle of the race it seemed like the Roush cars all showed up at the same time," Johnson said. "We had four of them to deal with.
"Then I noticed Matt had some trouble. And I was coming to lap Greg Biffle. And then Kurt got caught in the pits.
"At the end, Mark Martin [with a two-tire pit stop gamble to gain track position] was there to deal with. I got by him and inched out a nice lead.
"Then I had my own teammate. On the green-white-checkered, he was all over me and ran me real hard, which he's supposed to do."
Provided notes
Kyle Busch had tested here two weeks ago and provided his notes to Knaus and Johnson.
"I need to thank Kyle's team, because those guys have been great team players," Johnson said.
"So much changes through the course of the season, and they came up to prove out some ideas we've had. To be honest, it's so tough to test here [because the concrete track changes considerably after teams lay down a couple hours worth of rubber] that we haven't been up to test in a couple of years. So I don't think Hendrick Motorsports had any up-to-date data.
"But they were able to work through some things, and we looked at the data, made some good guesses, and came back with the right stuff."