Johnson nears title with Phoenix win

The reigning champion won his third consecutive race at the one-mile oval, scoring maximum points to increase his gap to Carl Edwards in the championship. A thirty-sixth place finish in the season finale will be enough for him to seal the title next week at Homestead.

Johnson started from pole but lost the lead to Jamie McMurray on the first lap, although he reclaimed it from Kurt Busch on lap 81. Later on he lost the lead again in the pits during a caution period to Jamie McMurray, but it took him just a corner to get it back again following the restart.

The race ended under a green-white-chequered finish where Johnson was under pressure from Busch, but the Californian had enough pace to fend him off the Penske racer and drive to his 40th career victory in Sprint Cup competition.

"I had a nice lead on the 2 (Busch) and I just wanted the race to finish out without having those restarts there at the end," Johnson said. "I knew Kurt was hungry and behind him was McMurray wanting to win an then the 99 (Edwards) off course. I knew that I had to be on my toes and get every restart right.

"I'm excited. I wish we could have left here and all we had to do was start at Homestead (to win the title). But the 99 (Edwards) put up a great fight today and showed true champion character throughout the whole year. Those guys really made us work hard for it and I know we're going to have to deal with them for a long time.

"As long as something doesn't go crazy for us at Homestead we're going to be able to join Cale (Yarborough). I hope that happens and I can't wait to start celebrating."

Busch finished in a strong second place, running his best race for a while and leading sixty laps throughout the afternoon. He was followed by McMurray, who surprisingly stayed ahead of his Roush Fenway teammate Carl Edwards who was closely following him on the last two laps of the race.

Edwards now heads into the season finale with a slim chance of challenging Johnson for the title, but still kept his hopes alive after being almost out of the fight for the championship in the early stages of the race, where he was unable to move up in the order from his fifteenth starting position.

His fourth place in the end was the highest he ran all day and he failed to lead a lap for the first time in the past three weeks.

"It's possible, not real probable," Edwards said about his championship hopes. "But I guarantee that isn't going to change the way we do business. We're going to go to Homestead with everything we've got. We'll go there and be aggressive and try to win the race.

"Mile-and-a-halves have been our best tracks lately and I just wish we could've run a little better, we ran pretty well but didn't have enough time. We were barely marching forward. My guys did a really good job and congratulations to Jimmie and those guys. They're making this really tough."

Rounding out the top-five was Denny Hamlin after a tough battle for the position with Dale Earnhardt Jr following the penultimate caution. Kevin Harvick followed him in sixth, while Kyle Busch was seventh after taking on new tyres in one of the late cautions, when most of the leaders chose to stay out to maintain track position.

Jeff Burton ran a similar tyre strategy to Busch to finish ninth, ahead of David Ragan and Greg Biffle, who is now mathematically out of the fight for the championship at the season finale, a race he has won three times in the past four years.

The race was incident filled with ten caution periods and two red flags coming out during nearly four hours of racing. The first red flag waved on lap 43 due to rain, halting the race for 24 minutes. Another interruption came later for 23 minutes on lap 275 due to a multi-car crash at turn three.

The incident was ignited when Juan Pablo Montoya and Casey Mears made contact while fighting for position getting into turn three. Nine cars were part of the pile up, including Scott Speed, whose car somehow ended up underneath David Gilliland's machine, requiring extensive work from the safety crews to separate one car from the other.

All drivers involved were checked and released from the track's care centre.

Another major incident took place in the last few metres of the race when Matt Kenseth tangled with AJ Allmendinger at the exit of turn four while battling for fifteenth place, sending the Californian into Montoya, both crashing hard against the inside wall. At least another nine cars were caught up in the wreck.

Among the Chasers Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart had tough days. The Hendrick driver ran strong before he hit engine trouble, causing his sixth DNF of the season. Stewart got spun six laps from the end when Allmendinger ran into Kenseth, when Stewart was on the outside of both of them.

Regan Smith was the highest finishing rookie in 23rd.

Pos  Driver              Car        Laps
 1.  Jimmie Johnson      Chevrolet   313
 2.  Kurt Busch          Dodge       313
 3.  Jamie McMurray      Ford        313
 4.  Carl Edwards        Ford        313
 5.  Denny Hamlin        Toyota      313
 6.  Dale Earnhardt Jr   Chevrolet   313
 7.  Kevin Harvick       Chevrolet   313
 8.  Kyle Busch          Toyota      313
 9.  Jeff Burton         Chevrolet   313
10.  David Ragan         Ford        313
11.  Greg Biffle         Ford        313
12.  Clint Bowyer        Chevrolet   313
13.  Kasey Kahne         Dodge       313
14.  Mark Martin         Chevrolet   313
15.  Matt Kenseth        Ford        313
16.  A.J. Allmendinger   Dodge       313
17.  Juan Montoya        Dodge       313
18.  Marcos Ambrose      Toyota      313
19.  Bobby Labonte       Dodge       312
20.  Dave Blaney         Toyota      312
21.  Travis Kvapil       Ford        312
22.  Tony Stewart        Toyota      312
23.  Regan Smith         Chevrolet   312
24.  Michael Waltrip     Toyota      311
25.  David Reutimann     Toyota      311
26.  Paul Menard         Chevrolet   311
27.  Ken Schrader        Toyota      311
28.  Robby Gordon        Dodge       311
29.  Bill Elliott        Ford        311
30.  Elliott Sadler      Dodge       310
31.  Reed Sorenson       Dodge       309
32.  Sterling Marlin     Chevrolet   309
33.  Sam Hornish Jr      Dodge       308
34.  Ryan Newman         Dodge       302
35.  David Gilliland     Ford        298
36.  Casey Mears         Chevrolet   278
37.  Johnny Sauter       Chevrolet   274
38.  Scott Riggs         Chevrolet   271
39.  Kyle Petty          Dodge       270
40.  Scott Speed         Toyota      269
41.  Jeff Gordon         Chevrolet   266
42.  Brian Vickers       Toyota       29
43.  Martin Truex Jr     Chevrolet    27

Chase For The Cup - Points Standing:

Pos  Driver              Change  Points
 1.  Jimmie Johnson               6561
 2.  Carl Edwards                 6420  +141
 3.  Greg Biffle                  6358  +203
 4.  Jeff Burton                  6292  +269
 5.  Kevin Harvick         +2     6233  +328
 6.  Clint Bowyer                 6226  +335
 7.  Jeff Gordon           -2     6151  +410
 8.  Matt Kenseth                 6091  +470
 9.  Denny Hamlin          +3     6090  +471
10.  Dale Earnhardt Jr     +1     6087  +474
11.  Kyle Busch            -1     6080  +481
12.  Tony Stewart          -3     6059  +502