AVONDALE, Ariz. – Jimmie Johnson moved a step closer to his first NASCAR championship on Sunday, using yet another smooth run to leave Phoenix International Speedway with a firm hold on the top spot in the season standings.

Johnson smartly settled for second place, racing winner Kevin Harvick just hard enough over a final three-lap sprint to the finish to maintain his track position and keep the Nextel Cup title within his reach. Johnson can wrap up the title with a 12th-place finish or better next week at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

“In order to get the win, I was really going to have to force the issue,” Johnson said. “I had a good run on Kevin ... a little bit of position inside of him, but he was shutting the door and I knew that I needed to be smart from that point on.”

Johnson heads into the season finale with a 63-point lead over Matt Kenseth, needing just one more trouble-free race to grab the title that has so cruelly eluded him the past two seasons.

Harvick, who won for the fifth time this year and swept the season at Phoenix, led 252 of the 312 laps and was out front for a series of late restarts. A short stoppage allowed both drivers to map out their final strategy, which called for Johnson to make a brief run at Harvick over the closing laps.

But Harvick twice held off the charge, and Johnson fell in line behind him as they crossed the finish line.

“Jimmie got a good run on me,” Harvick said. “But I wasn’t going to lose this race.”

Harvick, whose alternator was on the fritz over the final stretch, worried he wouldn’t have enough juice to make it to the end. But he got a good jump on the final restart, then steadily watched his rearview mirror as Johnson came hard at him.

Harvick blocked the challenge, briefly opened up a gap, then withstood a second a run by Johnson. From there, he knew Johnson couldn’t risk doing anything that would jeopardize the big picture.

“I knew he was going to push me, but he wasn’t going to take any unnecessary chances,” Harvick said. “He was going to try to make us make a mistake.”

The win moved Harvick into a tie for third in the standings, but 90 points back – and headed to Homestead knowing the title is Johnson’s to lose.

“We wish we were closer than that but we did everything we could do today,” he said. “That’s all we can do and however it falls, it falls. It’s been a great year for us.”

Denny Hamlin finished third, Jeff Gordon was fourth and Carl Edwards rounded out the top five as it was a decent day for nine of the Chase for the championship drivers – all but Kyle Busch finished inside the top 13.

Still, five of them were mathematically eliminated from title contention and the scoreboard now shows that only Kenseth, Hamlin, Harvick and Dale Earnhardt Jr. have a chance to catch Johnson.

“I’m not too optimistic about it,” said Kenseth, who finished 13th. “Obviously anything can happen, we’re still within striking distance if they have a mechanical problem or some type of problem like that.

“But certainly we’d be fooling ourselves if we think we’d beat them on performance.”

That’s because Johnson has been unbelievable of late, finishing second or better in the past five races to climb back into contention for a title that looked to be well out of reach after Round 1 of the Chase. He wrecked in the opener and finished 39th, dropping all the way to ninth in the standings.

Instead of crying over what could have been, again – remember, Johnson has fallen apart in the Chase the past two seasons – he took it one race at a time and didn’t worry about the points.

“I never felt like we were out of it, but I knew we needed some bad luck,” he said. “I never conceded, but I also said to myself ’Let’s just go all-out.’ ”

That strategy has worked to perfection, and Johnson doesn’t want to stray from it now. Still, it will be a challenge to stay calm with the biggest prize of his life right there for the taking. And after leading the points for all but four of the 26 weeks of the regular season, he firmly believes he’s earned it.

He just isn’t sure how he’ll get it.

“I seriously don’t have any clue what to expect,” he said. “I don’t have any strategy other than go down and finish ahead of (the other Chase drivers). It’s just that simple. That’s all we’ve done so far, through these last few months, and we’re just going to go down there and do the same thing we’ve been doing.”

But first he’ll have to make it through what promises to be a stress-filled week, one that Harvick doesn’t envy at all.

“It’s a lot of pressure, there’s a lot on the line,” Harvick said. “It seems like everything you’ve done all year comes down to one race. It will probably be a long week, he probably won’t sleep much. He should avoid the Internet, avoid the newspaper, avoid the radio and all interviews.”

But Johnson had other ideas.

“I’ll go the golf course tomorrow and have some fun and relax, and stay busy Tuesday and Wednesday and just try to let the week hurry by,” he said.

You must be logged in to comment.