Brickyard Title Goes To Johnson After Tough Race

It wasn’t easy but after a grueling series of short dashes for victory, Jimmie Johnson finally managed to take home the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard Sprint Cup race. Sunday afternoon’s race saw 43 of the world’s best driver’s fight for survival as the rough racetrack brought them to a screeching halt repetitively during the course of the race.

Unfortunate circumstances resulted in NASCAR imposing a number of precautionary pit stops for the sake of safety at the Brickyard Sprint Cup race on the weekend. This not only broke the racing into a series of ten or twelve lap dashes, but also meant that drivers had to pamper their cars and do their best to save their tires to ensure that everything lasted and performed until the final run. Tire problems continued to vex drivers and crew chiefs for the entire length of the race. Despite having spent years developing race tires specifically for Brickyard racetracks, race conditions on Sunday simply devastated all that research and had drivers racing conservatively instead of full-speed as they normally would. Constant restarts meant extra wear and safety was a major concern at the event. But in the end it was NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson who overcame the odds and managed to cross the finish line first. Johnson managed to finish just one car length ahead of his chief competitor, Carl Edwards, in a dazzling sprint to the end on the final seven laps. Despite the dangerous conditions it seems that Johnson threw caution to the wind somewhat and pushed every last ounce of speed out of his Chevrolet to take home the winner’s trophy.

From the start of the race the old Indy track promised to pose new challenges for tire wear so NASCAR and Goodyear agreed on a mandatory caution after ten laps in order to check tire wear for safety reasons. But the field didn’t even last that long. The first caution cropped up on only the fourth lap when Michael Waltrip lost control of his speeding Toyota. From that point on things were difficult and slow. Most of the action happened in the final laps when Edwards and Johnson, who started the race from pole position, battled it out for the winner’s trophy. During this short period of time the pair made managed to turn in some of the fastest laps of the day and leave third-place winner Denny Hamlin in the dust. The three were followed by Elliot Sadler and Jeff Gordon.