Jimmie Johnson's Extra Motivation

Turns out everyone was a little ahead of themselves.

The wild-card race wasn't last week at Talladega, Ala., but Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway. At least as far as NASCAR championship points leader Jimmie Johnson is concerned.

All week the three-time defending Sprint Cup Series champ refused to buy into everyone else's hype that he had a historic fourth consecutive title wrapped up. He cautioned, chastised and -- as it turned out, correctly predicted -- that the 184-point lead over the field he took into Sunday's race wasn't enough to seal the deal.

After being collected in a crash only three laps into the 334-lap Dickies 500, Johnson's nearly one-race points advantage has shrunk to only 73 points over Hendrick Motorsports teammate Mark Martin with two races remaining.

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"It's still respectable, 73 points,'' an obviously disappointed Johnson said after his 38th-place effort. "But I hate we gave up all those points. It's one of those things, I guess, wrong place at the wrong time.''

It's not a location the steady, right-place-right-time Johnson is used to. Not only does he lead the series in wins (six), he has 22 top-10 finishes in 34 races and only one DNF. In four of the last six trips to the 1.5-mile Fort Worth track, Johnson had finished either first or second.

But only minutes after the green flag dropped, even before a commercial break, Sam Hornish Jr. -- thanks to a shove from David Reutimann -- spun up and into Johnson's No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet, sending it hard into the wall.

Johnson's car sustained major damage and the crew spent more than an hour working on it in the garage. He returned to the track 112 laps down and after various repairs from that point on -- finished 121 laps behind race winner Kurt Busch.

Just like that, what looked like a runaway championship will be a dramatic, strategic, compelling affair.

But that's why they race. And that's why we watch. Any race is a wild card.

"It happened this way in reverse last week,'' said Martin, the 50-year old sentimental favorite who was a pinball in one of the multi-car crashes at Talladega last Sunday.

"I'm not sure why people are counting everyone out. It's not over yet.

"And I'm still baffled why everyone's hung up on first- and second-place. There's two guys (Jeff Gordon and Kurt Busch) that knocked me out of [past] championships breathing down my neck.''

This rough outing may be the worse thing that could have happened to those pursuing Johnson.
Now he's got the chance to be that guy.

Next week, the series heads to Phoenix, where Martin led the most laps and won the race this spring. He'll need a repeat performance. At least.

Because now Johnson's mad. Mad in the sense his competitive spirits have been stirred and spurred. This rough outing may be the worse thing that could have happened to those pursuing Johnson.

In this ultra-competitive NASCAR era, no one will ever win three straight titles, much less position himself so well for a fourth.

If Johnson hadn't masterfully amassed that 184-point advantage, we would assume his 73-point lead pretty darn comfortable.

Especially when you consider his record at Texas and that he had won three straight at the Phoenix mile before Martin won in April. He has a 19 percent winning percentage at tracks 1-mile and shorter (nine wins in 48 starts) and a 19 percent winning percentage at intermediate tracks like the 1.5-mile Homestead-Miami Speedway, where the season finishes Nov. 22.

He's finished in the top 10 in 56 percent of all his short track starts and in 67 percent of his starts at the 1.5-milers.

"I'm definitely disappointed about tonight,'' Johnson said. "I felt like we had a chance to win the race today. I felt like at least we could stretch the margin or keep it like it was. But it wasn't meant to be.

"We still have a nice lead and we'll take it from here."