Jimmie Johnson won… again. Woo…hoo? After Kurt Busch dominated the Food City 500, Jimmie Johnson pulled off a brilliant bit of driving as he navigated through a packed restart with ten laps to go to win the race at Bristol. The stories of the race were the weather, Kurt Busch, and crash after crash after crash.
The weather directly caused over twenty caution laps and indirectly caused many more by contributing to the crash-fest. The skies over Bristol (which is what everyone will continue to call this race regardless of what the corporate sponsors say or do or spend) were cloudy and rainy all day long. There can be no overstating the effect that the weather had on the race.
Kurt Busch was magnificent for the first 490 laps on the soggy half-mile track at Bristol. He lead for 275 of those laps after starting second. Bristol looked like it was Busch’s for the taking with less than 20 laps to go. But a 13 car pile up on lap 483 lead to a restart and opened the door for Johnson to do what Johnson does so well.
After the pit, Busch and Johnson were dumped back to fifth and sixth due to taking four tires while others took just two and moved ahead of them. But that didn’t last long. Soon after the restart, Johnson slipped and slid through the crowd and pulled out to an insurmountable lead. He darted and dashed and ran to the front of the pack to claim his third race of the season and fiftieth of his career. It was his first win at Bristol.
Despite the fact that Johnson has won more than he’s lost this year, it is Kevin Harvick who leads the Sprint Cup chase thus far by virtue of hanging tough in every race, even though he’s yet to win one, which really makes me question the whole points system. If a guy, even if he’s Jimmie Johnson, wins three out of the first five races, he should be the leader, shouldn’t he? I mean, he’s batting .600 when his closest competitors have won only one race apiece.
