NASCAR at Texas Motor Speedway: Jimmie Johnson wins again, extends points lead

In her first effort working with new crew chief Tony Gibson, Danica Patrick finished a career-best 24th in Sunday’s NASCAR race at Texas Motor Speedway.

“It was really steady from the beginning,” Patrick said. “The car unloaded and it had speed right off the get-go. We just kept on improving with it. I felt like it was a nice progression of the weekend where I actually felt like I knew I why I went faster and I knew why I went slower.

Everything about this Chase seems more and more familiar as Jimmie Johnson continues to lead the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings with two races to go.

NASCAR fans have seen this all before – five times before, to be exact. Johnson is so lethal in the Chase, it starts to seem nearly inevitable he’ll win again.

After a late spin cost him a good result at Martinsville Speedway last week, Dale Earnhardt Jr. came to Texas saying he still needed “closure” on his recovery from multiple concussions.

Without a solid top-10 to show for his efforts, Earnhardt Jr. still had some lingering doubts and questions in the back of his mind.

As he has throughout the Chase, Clint Bowyer had a solid result in Sunday’s NASCAR race at Texas Motor Speedway, finishing sixth.

However, despite finishing in the top 10 for the seventh time in eight Chase races, it still wasn’t enough to keep Bowyer in the championship picture. The two drivers ahead of him in the standings – Jimmie Johnson and Brad Keselowski – finished first and second, respectively.

Despite racing his guts out and giving maximum effort, Brad Keselowski still ended up losing Sunday’s NASCAR Texas race to Jimmie Johnson.

That sort of thing always seems to happen to Johnson’s opponents in the Chase. Carl Edwards has been there. So has Denny Hamlin. So have Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon.

Pulling away from Brad Keselowski in a green-white-checkered-flag finish at Texas Motor Speedway, Jimmie Johnson won Sunday night’s AAA Texas 500 and tightened his grip on a possible sixth NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship.

Johnson finished .808 seconds ahead of Keselowski and increased his lead in the standings to from two points to seven. The victory was Johnson’s fifth of the season, his second at Texas and the 60th of his career. For the second straight week, Johnson won a Chase race from the pole.

Kyle Busch ran third, followed by Matt Kenseth, Tony Stewart and Clint Bowyer.

After NASCAR called the sixth caution of the race on lap 274, for debris on the backstretch, Keselowski entered the pits as the leader but dropped eight spots on the exchange of stops.

First, Keselowski slid to the front of his pit stall on the stop. Compounding the problem, the No. 10 Chevrolet of Danica Patrick, whose pit stall was immediately in front of Keselowski’s, stopped at the top of her box, blocking Keselowski’s exit.

By the time the No. 2 crew pushed the Blue Deuce back to give Keselowski clearance, he had lost the eight spots, as other lead-lap cars rolled past.

Keselowski spent the subsequent 30-lap green-flag run making up ground. On Lap 307, he passed Matt Kenseth for the fourth position, with Johnson running second behind Kyle Busch.

Three laps later, Marcos Ambrose’s accident in Turn 2 brought out caution No. 7, and Keselowski regained the lead with a two-tire stop. Busch was second off pit road, ahead of Johnson, who restarted third on Lap 316.

Keselowski surged to the lead, clearing Busch on the backstretch, and held the top spot until the caution on Lap 321 for an incident involving Kasey Kahne, Jeff Gordon and Greg Biffle in Turn 2 slowed the field. Kahne got the worst of the contact, lost a lap and saw his title hopes all but evaporate.

Keselowski and Johnson raced side-by-side and a hairbreadth from losing control after the restart on lap 327, with Keselowski pulling out to an eight-car-length lead, but a wreck on the frontstretch two laps later set up the two-lap dash to the finish.

Here are the results from Sunday’s NASCAR race at Texas Motor Speedway:

Texas Motor Speedway has been billing itself as a “Wild Asphalt Circus” for months, and NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick found that out the hard way on Sunday afternoon.

Just two hours before the green flag of the AAA Texas 500, a skydiver damaged Harvick’s No. 29 car as it sat on pit road. The parachutist, carrying a Texas flag with a weighted sandbag, flew dangerously close to the car and landed safely – but the weight holding the flag down slammed into the side of Harvick’s car.

As you watch today’s NASCAR race from Texas Motor Speedway, here are some storylines, notes and drivers to keep an eye on:

Johnson and Keselowski going toe-to-toe

A cold front moved through Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday and in its wake temperatures will be cooler, with little-to-no threat of rain. The forecast for today will start off with some clouds but as the day wears on we will see more sunshine. Temperatures will also be cooler than the previous days with highs in the lower 70s.

Please follow me on Twitter @NASCAR_WXMAN and like me on Facebook for the latest weather updates through the week.

It’s NASCAR race day at Texas Motor Speedway and we’ve got the actual race start time, the starting lineup and some other facts about today’s race for you below.

What time does the race start today? The cast of the remade Dallas TV show – Josh Henderson, Jordana Brewster, Jesse Metcalfe and Julie Gonzalo – will give the command to fire engines at 3:08 p.m. Eastern time (2:08 local). Following a few pace laps, the drivers will take the green flag at 3:16 p.m EST (and remember, today marks the end of Daylight Savings Time). So if you want to skip the pre-race show and just tune in for the actual race itself, turn on your TV at 3:16 p.m. EST.

Before he even removed his helmet, Kyle Busch walked purposefully toward Ryan Blaney’s No. 22 car to have a word with the rookie Nationwide Series driver in the seconds after Saturday night’s race at Texas Motor Speedway.

Blaney, still climbing out of his car on pit road, turned his head just in time to see Busch coming at him.

Elliott Sadler parked his car on pit road at Texas Motor Speedway and climbed out, no longer the NASCAR Nationwide Series points leader. He removed the heat shields from his shoes and quickly hopped over the pit road wall, walking briskly into the night.

A disappointing 11th-place finish had just cost him all of the six-point lead he held over Ricky Stenhouse Jr. entering Saturday night’s race, and Sadler was clearly discouraged.

Denny Hamlin was upset with Austin Dillon after the drivers (who finished fifth and sixth, respectively) made contact following Saturday night’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.

Here is Hamlin’s side of the incident, courtesy of Toyota public relations:

Bruton Smith, the eccentric billionaire whose Speedway Motorsports Inc. owns eight NASCAR tracks, held court in the Texas Motor Speedway media center on Saturday and addressed a wide range of subjects.

Among his comments were thoughts on the lack of drama in NASCAR, fuel-mileage races and the state of the Truck Series.

A cold front will work across Texas during the afternoon, and this could spark a few scattered storms near Texas Motor Speedway later today.

We will have to watch the radar later this afternoon and evening for the development of scattered showers and thunderstorms. It will also be warm this afternoon with temperatures reaching the low 80s. By Sunday, the front will have moved through and any threat of storms will decrease during the morning. It will be cooler Sunday afternoon with highs in the low 70s and mostly dry.

Despite being a serious championship contender, Brad Keselowski’s qualifying efforts throughout the Chase have stunk like skunky beer.

Heading into this weekend’s race at Texas Motor Speedway, Keselowski was 20th in Charlotte qualifying, 25th at Kansas and 32nd at Martinsville. His 10th-place start at Dover was his only top-10 start of the Chase.

Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage has proclaimed Sunday’s race as a campaign between points leader Jimmie Johnson and Brad Keselowski to decide who will rule NASCAR’s “oval office.”

But third-place Clint Bowyer, who sits just 26 points behind Johnson and still considers himself very much alive in the championship, joked he has a plan to close the gap on the drivers he’s chasing..

After two miserable weeks away from the track, Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he hoped to use Martinsville as “a little closure” on his process of recovering from multiple concussions.

He didn’t get it.

Here’s a look at the race weekend schedule for NASCAR’s tripleheader at Texas Motor Speedway (all times listed are EASTERN, not local time):

THURSDAY

Brad Keselowski doesn’t seem to mind being given short shrift, even when it comes to gauging his chances of hoisting the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship trophy three races from now. The underdog label seems to suit him well.

While Keselowski’s four-week hold on the series lead is gone -- left in the hands of five-time series champ Jimmie Johnson -- his motivation is in ample supply.

The next step in Keselowski’s quest comes this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway, site of the AAA Texas 500 (3 p.m. ET, ESPN), round 8 of the 10-race Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs.

While the No. 2 Penske Racing team in its current form is at a clear deficit in the experience department compared to Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus, the pairing of Keselowski and crew chief Paul Wolfe has produced dynamic results -- eight wins -- in just two seasons together at the Sprint Cup level.

“We like our role in this Chase,” Keselowski said. “While we aren’t being overlooked by any means, there are many who think that we are still too young of a team to seriously challenge the 48 team (Johnson). We like it that way. In reality, we are a very good race team that is primed to take this fight right down to the last lap at Homestead-Miami Speedway.”

Even though Johnson stormed to victory at Martinsville Speedway last weekend to snatch a two-point edge in the series standings, Keselowski’s career-best sixth on NASCAR’s shortest track likely counts as a moral win. He’ll need more of the same this weekend at Texas, another trouble-spot track.

While 1.5-mile speedways have been a positive this year for the No. 2 team, the Fort Worth layout has historically not been kind to Keselowski. He has yet to secure a top-10 finish in eight tries at Texas and his 36th-place finish there because of fuel-system issues in April stands as his worst result of the 2012 season.

The chassis Keselowski’s Penske team will bring to Texas was last driven to a sixth-place finish at New Hampshire. Johnson will compete in the car he last raced at Charlotte last month, when he notched a third-place run.

Clint Bowyer -- who ranks third in the standings, 26 points off the lead -- has some ground to gain if he’s going to remain a threat for his first Sprint Cup title. He’ll be competing in a proven winner the next two weeks -- his Texas car prevailed at Charlotte in October, and his car for Phoenix took the checkered flag at Richmond in September.

“All I can do is worry about running well and putting ourselves in position to win races every week,” Bowyer said. “Bad luck is not something I can really wish upon the other guys in front of us or even worry about. Yes, we are going to need some help from the other guys to stay in this deal. ... Even after winning Charlotte we were still 20-something points out and we’re going to need some help to catch these guys.”