Johnson still wary of summer slump

For the last two years Johnson has led the standings early in the season before crawling into the final Chase races with a run of bad results in the summer months.

Last year's summer slump began at Indianapolis, when he lost the points lead after crashing out following a burst tyre.

He eventually limped into fourth place at the Chase cut-off, despite having a comfortable points lead at the start of the season.

This run of bad form was put down as one of the main reason Johnson didn't maintain his form to win the title.

Yesterday, Johnson also suffered a blown tyre, but this time rallied back from 38th position to win NASCAR's second biggest race of the year.

The Brickyard 400 victory means that Johnson has won the sport's three biggest money races this season - along with February's Daytona 500 and May's Nextel All-Star event.

"It's way too early to say that we have broken the pattern, but, you know, this is a great start," Johnson said. "We're all going to learn together as these next few weeks unfold and as we get into the Chase.

"It's nice to speculate and to, you know, take that as team morale and within our own race team and tell our guys we got over a big hurdle today, one that really plagued us in the past.

"But there's just too much racing, too much racing going on. Matt Kenseth is showing a lot of strength. Jeff Burton is showing a lot of strength. So the momentum is important for us right now to get into the Chase, but when we get in the Chase, the points re-rack, it's going to be a tough Chase.

"You're going to have some very experienced, very talented drivers, great race teams, and it's going to be a shootout for those 10 races. It's just too early now to get too confident in anything really.

"I can't start commenting on it [the Championship] I can't talk about it. We got to take it race by race. If I'm lucky enough to be here after Homestead, bragging about it, I'll have plenty to talk about then. But right now it's just race-by-race. We just got to stay focused on it."

Johnson revealed he thought he wasn't going to be able to come back from the disaster of his lap 39 tyre blow-out in the way he did yesterday.

"The issue we had with the tyre, I have to admit, myself personally, it really deflated me inside the car," he added. "I thought, "Man, it's going to be impossible to pass here." The tyre started coming apart when I was trying to get back to pit road. I thought it destroyed the fender and really took us out of contention.

"But things were on our side. Luckily, there was no major damage. We didn't lose a lap. The caution came out. From then on, next two pit stops I took it, you know, kind of easy, trying to get through traffic.

"After I got two good runs without Chad being nervous over the radio telling me about the left front, I just got really aggressive and drove the heck out of the car after that and got the job done."