CUP: Championship Battle Rolls Into The Desert

Sprint Cup

CUP: Championship Battle Rolls Into The Desert

Will Phoenix offer a repeat of Texas as Jimmie Johnson and Brad Keselowski wrestle for title?...

Mike Hembree | Posted November 08, 2012 Avondale, AZ

Jimmie Johnson (48) and Brad Keselowski (2) battled fiercely for the lead at Texas. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

It’s difficult to imagine a better late-race joust between championship contenders than last week’s Texas two-step matching Jimmie Johnson and Brad Keselowski.

They fought for the high ground like toe-to-toe boxers over the closing laps, the rest of the 43-car field essentially forgotten in the excitement. Johnson roared past Keselowski with a final two-lap charge to win the race and remain the favorite to win another championship.

Phoenix International Raceway could produce the same sort of drama this weekend, however – although on a different scale. The landscape is dramatically different, the track being smaller, slower and not as forgiving.

Johnson leads Keselowski by seven points going into Sunday’s AdvoCare 500.

“Seven points is nothing to feel comfortable about and to relax on,” Johnson said. “We’re still going to go into Phoenix and act as if we’re behind and go in there to try to sit on the pole and win the race again.”

That plan has worked marvelously for Johnson and his 48 team the past two weeks. He won the pole and race at Martinsville, then repeated the same process at Texas. Although Keselowski has had finishes of sixth and second in the past two weeks, he’s allowed Johnson to claim the point lead and the momentum.

For Keselowski, there’s no hesitation over the next two weeks.

“You're not going to win races or win this championship on your back foot, I can tell you that, whether it's me or Jimmie,” he said. “You're going to have to go full forward and win these races.

“With two races left and the ability to win the last two races and that being enough to overcome that deficit, to me it is what it is, and we feel like we can fight around it.”

Keselowski finished fifth in the second race of the season at Phoenix while his Penske Racing team was still finding its footing. He had three finishes of 32nd or worse in the season’s first seven races.

“I look at Phoenix, and I think we had a great run in the spring,” he said. “We finished fifth, and I felt like that was when we weren't even quite as strong as we are now as a team. Now that we're stronger, I feel like it's realistic for us to go to the next two races and win, and that's what we're going to try and do. That's the goal I have.”

Johnson was fourth in the season’s first race at Phoenix and has four victories there. Keselowski is winless at the one-mile track.

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 30 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.

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Mike Hembree

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