NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Can Johnson Make Another Run?
Jimmie Johnson is 14 points behind Brad Keselowski…
Tom Jensen  |  Posted October 10, 2012   Charlotte, NC
Jimmie Johnson will make a rare Nationwide Series appearance at Phoenix in March. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
If Jimmie Johnson is to win his sixth NASCAR Sprint Cup championship this season, he needs to start cutting into Brad Keselowski’s points lead soon.

With four of 10 races already in the books for the 2012 Chase for the Sprint Cup, Keselowski holds a 14-point lead over Johnson. That’s certainly not an insurmountable margin — in fact, one bad race for Keselowski coupled with a strong run by Johnson could turn things right around.

But in three of the four Chase races to date, Keselowski has finished ahead of Johnson, including victories at Chicagoland Speedway and Dover International Speedway.

As a result, Johnson is in the somewhat unfamiliar position of having to attack from behind, rather than being out front now.

This week, the NASCAR circuit heads home for the Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, where Johnson’s results have been uneven of late.

While Johnson has won six points races at the 1.5-mile track and won the Sprint All-Star Race there earlier this year, lately he’s mostly struggled here. In his last five points races at CMS, Johnson’s average finish is 22.6, including a 34th-place run a year ago that essentially ended Johnson’s string of five consecutive Cup titles.

For his part, Johnson professes to be confident going into the race.

“We’ve been very competitive,” he said. “Last year, we had probably the best car and one of the top two or three cars, and I just crashed late after trying to overcome some pit strategy issues we had. So, I feel good. I love that track. We won the All-Star Race and ran very well in the (Coca-Cola) 600, so I feel like we’ll be there and be a threat, and I need to be at this time of the year. We need to be on top of things.”

Johnson also likes the other tracks coming up in the Chase. All told, in 84 Chase races, Johnson has 20 victories, although he’s only won two of the last 24.

“I love the races in the Chase,” he said. “They are very good tracks for us. When I look down the lineup, I get very fired up for all of them. Martinsville isn’t too far away. At Texas, we were really strong in the spring there. Phoenix is good. Homestead has been good to us. So I feel like we’ve got a lot of great racetracks coming up.”

But more than anything, he has to start finishing ahead of Keselowski if he wants to win his sixth championship.

In the last 14 races, Keselowski has three race victories, eight top-five finishes and 13 top 10s. His average finish in that period is 6.14.

Johnson has one win, six top fives, eight top 10s and an average finish of 12.0 during that time.

And in those last 14 races, Keselowski has finished ahead of Johnson 11 times.

So it’s game on now, with Johnson needing to step it up in a hurry if he’s to win another title. Saturday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway should tell a lot about whether or not Johnson can do it again.

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.
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