Jimmie Johnson has been crowned the 2007 NASCAR Nextel Cup Champion after a seventh place finish in Sunday's season ending Ford 400 at the Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida.
Johnson went into the 36th and final round of the gruelling Nextel Cup schedule with an 86 point lead over his Hendrick Motorsports teammate and mentor Jeff Gordon but while he was unable to extend his race winning streak to five in Sunday's 267-lap race the California based driver did more than enough to retain the title he first won in 2006.
Even though Johnson could have mathematically lost the championship as late as lap 264 such is the nature of the NASCAR scoring system the eventual title outcome rarely looked in doubt from the drop of the green flag despite the best efforts of Gordon and his quadruple championship winning #24 team.
Starting the race only needing to finish 18th to clinch the crown Johnson was able to lead the first lap and thus gained an extra five bonus points, meaning he could afford to slip to 19th and still take the title. As the race wore on it became apparent that Gordon wouldn't lead the most laps, reducing his potential points haul by five more markers and giving Johnson a 21st place safety net as the race entered its closing stages.
As has so often been the case this season Johnson narrowly avoided disaster on several occasions, as all champions must do from time to time. On lap 50 the #48 Chevrolet was caught on pit road by a caution but crucially Gordon was also pitting and therefore the drop to 18th was softened by the fact that Gordon was one place further back. Some 30 laps later Johnson was again saved from a potential pit fall when eagle eyed crew chief Chad Knaus spotted a loose lug nut during a round of safety car pitstops. Although Johnson lost half a dozen places while the nut was tightened, the penalty could have been far worse if Johnson had lost a wheel following the restart.
Gordon knew he had to throw caution to the wind and simply go for the race victory but despite running in the top ten virtually all day he could rise no higher than third at any point. Gordon also had to contend with the fact that he was rarely more than a handful of places away from Johnson in the running order with the two teammates engaging in some respectful wheel to wheel action at varying points of the race as they swapped positions back and forth.
Following the seventh and final caution of the race a ten-lap sprint to the finish remained with Gordon taking the restart sixth and Johnson seventh. It was only now that Johnson appeared to visibly back off for as Gordon charged off after the leaders Johnson allowed the gap between the two to grow. As Gordon came up against a brick wall in the form of birthday boy Denny Hamlin in their battle for third Johnson settled in behind Martin Truex Jr in seventh place and simply cruised home to take the chequered flag.
Capping what has to be one of the most dominant team performances ever seen in the modern era the two Hendrick drivers finish the year with the two single best point tallies in the four year history of the Chase for the Championship. Johnson, whose final winning margin was 77 points, ends the year with ten wins including four in the ten-race Chase and just two finishes worse than seventh during the championship stretch. Gordon meanwhile who was the last driver to win back-to-back titles in 1997/98, finishes the year with a record breaking 21 top five and 30 top ten finishes from 36 starts. Despite winning twice during the Chase and never finishing lower than eleventh Gordon's search for a fifth Cup Series title will continue into 2008.
Virtually overshadowed amidst the championship hype was a compelling drive by Matt Kenseth who led 213 laps en route to his second win of the season, extending Jack Roush's unbeaten streak at the 1.5-mile variable banked Homestead oval to four years.
