CASPER
New member
FORT WORTH, Texas – Jeff Gordon was fighting mad and now teammate Jimmie Johnson is in quite a fight of his own in his drive for an unprecedented fifth championship in a row.
Johnson lost his points lead to Denny Hamlin with two races left in a close three-way Chase for the Sprint Cup after another frustrating Sunday in Texas, when some troublesome pit stops early led to an unusual midrace crew change.
"I just watched the World Series and when a pitcher is not doing his job, they make a change and get someone in who can," Johnson said. "We just had some things going on today that we couldn't rebound from and it really put us in a bad position. ... It kind of led to the bad result."
Gordon's crew was conveniently available after he was wrecked out of the race and got into a backstretch scuffle with Jeff Burton.
On two stops early in the race, Johnson lost ground because of problems changing the front right tire. He had climbed to as high as second before those stops, but restarted after the second during a caution in 13th place, while Hamlin and Harvick both ran in the top six.
While Hamlin won after officially leading the final 29 laps, Matt Kenseth shot past him briefly on the restart with three laps to go before Hamlin quickly recovered to win at the 1 1/2-mile, high-banked track for the second time this year. Kenseth finished second, ahead of Mark Martin.
Hamlin won at Texas in April, less than three weeks after surgery to repair a torn ACL in his left knee, when Johnson was the runner-up. Hamlin's first race after the surgery was a 30th-place finish at Phoenix, where the Chase goes next weekend.