Johnson Masters the Concrete for His 10th Monster Mile Win

Credit: Beth Reinke for Skirts and Scuffs  

What does one person do with 10 Miles the Monster trophies? Ask Jimmie Johnson. The driver wheeled his No. 48 Chevy to Victory Lane in Sunday’s FedEx 400 for his 20th top-10 finish in 27 career Sprint Cup races at Dover.

Johnson said things came together for them very late in the race, but once they had the opportunity, they capitalized on it. 

“What a long, hard-fought day to get to the front. It seemed like four or five of us could run the same speed and just couldn’t really pass. We did a great job of hanging in there. My pit stops were awesome. We kind of took a chance on pit sequence to pick off a couple of spots to get us from fifth to third, third to a shot for the win. Then that last set of tires, I was running Harvick down and we ended up staying on them and his car didn’t look as strong as it was early in the day and we were able to take advantage of it.”

The victory puts Johnson in an elite group of drivers with 10 or more wins at a single track, along with Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip and David Pearson.

“I’m very thankful for the opportunity I’ve had at Hendrick Motorsports, the amazing people I’ve had to work with, the support from our sponsor Lowe’s, Chad, Rick," Johnson said. “All of those things and the fact that I sit in that 48 car has allowed me to win the 10 races here and have this great opportunity in history.

Credit: Beth Reinke for Skirts and Scuffs

“I’m almost in shock that we’re there. I mean, 74 race wins, 10 here – you can’t dream that big. So I’m just blown away and honored by…what we’ve done with our opportunity and honored to have a shot at history with Dale, and then the 10 wins here.”

The drivers who started at the front – polesitter Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. on the outside – dominated the early part of the race, leading a combined 249 of the first 258 laps between them. But both drivers ran into snags toward the end.

The first multi-car accident involved Trevor Bayne, Michael Annett and Justin Allgaier. Bayne was invited to the NASCAR hauler after the race for exiting his car before safety worked arrived.

Later, Clint Bowyer got into Denny Hamlin, sending him toward the inside wall. The No. 11 car’s rear end narrowly missed the wall, but careened back up across the track and hit the outside wall; he finished 21st. On the green-and-white checkered, Truex restarted in the third spot, but slid back, still finishing a respectable sixth.

With about 140 to go, there was an oddball caution for runaway tire from Michael Annett’s pit, which came to rest against on the wrong side of pit road. Then, in another strange occurrence, the concrete seam between the pits of Tony Stewart and Jamie McMurray crumbled and formed a gutter, causing a brief delay while crews cleaned up the loose chunks.

Kyle Busch and Brian Scott had a late-race tussle when they got together and slid down the track into the inside wall before coming to a stop; they finished 36th and 38th, respectively. The final caution was for an incident involving Casey Mears, Greg Biffle and AJ Allmendinger, and led to the G-W-C finish.

Points leader Kevin Harvick finished second, with Kyle Larson, Kasey Kahne and Aric Almirola rounding out the top five.

The full unofficial results:

POS.	CAR #	DRIVER
1	48	Jimmie Johnson
2	4	Kevin Harvick
3	42	Kyle Larson
4	5	Kasey Kahne
5	43	Aric Almirola
6	78	Martin Truex Jr
7	1	Jamie McMurray
8	27	Paul Menard
9	15	Clint Bowyer
10	24	Jeff Gordon
11	22	Joey Logano
12	2	Brad Keselowski
13	55	David Ragan
14	88	Dale Earnhardt Jr
15	10	Danica Patrick
16	14	Tony Stewart
17	16	Greg Biffle
18	31	Ryan Newman
19	19	Carl Edwards
20	7	Alex Bowman
21	11	Denny Hamlin
22	9	Sam Hornish Jr
23	40	Landon Cassill
24	47	AJ Allmendinger
25	38	David Gilliland
26	35	Cole Whitt
27	13	Casey Mears
28	34	Brett Moffitt
29	23	J.J. Yeley
30	26	Jeb Burton
31	41	Kurt Busch
32	83	Matt DiBenedetto
33	3	Austin Dillon
34	62	Brendan Gaughan
35	32	Mike Bliss
36	18	Kyle Busch
37	17	Ricky Stenhouse Jr
38	33	Brian Scott
39	20	Matt Kenseth
40	98	Josh Wise
41	46	Michael Annett
42	51	Justin Allgaier
43	6	Trevor Bayne