7th title for Johnson

Photo: The Canadian Press

Jimmie Johnson walked across the stage after driver introductions to find his car inexplicably missing from pit road.

In a dramatic start to his race for a record-tying seventh championship, Johnson learned NASCAR's inspectors had yanked his Chevrolet off the pre-race grid and sent it back through tech. The Hendrick Motorsports team had been accused of manipulating a body panel, and Johnson had to start last in the field.

In less than 30 laps, he was sniffing the top-10.

"He come from last doing that?" Joey Logano asked him team, "Wow."

For most of the day, Johnson was the worst of the championship contenders in a winner-take-all season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. He needed only to beat three other drivers to tie Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt with a record seven titles, but he was clearly not in the same league as the other finalists Sunday night.

Johnson, who seemed to have sensed the last 10 weeks that he was finally going to grab that special seventh title, never panicked.

"I felt like something was going to happen, and I was going to be OK with it," Johnson said. "For a while I came to grips with the reality of (finishing) third, fourth, somewhere in there and shaking somebody else's hand and being happy for them.

"Then it changed so quick at the end."

Johnson was practically gifted his seventh title when Carl Edwards' aggressive attempt to win the championship ended in a wreck. Johnson got the restart of his life in overtime, took the lead on the very last lap of the race, won for the first time in his career at Homestead and grabbed the final Sprint Cup trophy.

The win was the 15th for Hendrick Motorsports and seventh for crew chief Chad Knaus, who now only trails Dale Inman's record eight.