Johnson gets the point with his latest victory

RICHMOND, Va. -- All the struggling going on in Jimmie Johnson’s rearview mirror Saturday night only helped put his competition in a deeper hole heading into the Chase for the Championship.

Johnson simply drove away from the dogfight behind him in the Chevy Rock & Roll 400 to get his second straight Nextel Cup win and his sixth of the season, emerging as the top-seeded driver for the Chase, which begins next week.

Johnson didn’t show his hand until the last 100 laps of the 400 at Richmond International Raceway. Teammate Jeff Gordon, who’d come in seeking a fifth win that would have tied Johnson for the top spot, had led the most laps, 191.

“We didn’t have the best car until the end,” Johnson said. “Finally we’d made enough changes and got that car right, and it was pretty awesome at the end.”

Gordon got into a late duel with Dale Earnhardt Jr. that hurt both of them in addition to letting Johnson get away.

Earnhardt’s engine blew with six laps left in the race, ending his last gasp to make the 12-driver field for the Chase. And Gordon faded to a fourth-place finish.

“I’m happy for Jimmy, but I hate he got those 10 more bonus points on us,” Gordon said. “I thought we were going to be better.

“I got into a fight with Junior and it was a good battle, but it just wore my tires out.”

Tony Stewart wound up second behind Johnson, but was clearly disappointed that he didn’t get a fourth win which would have left him tied with Gordon for second entering the Chase.

“We just didn’t end up where we needed to be,” said Stewart, who led 27 laps after the halfway point. “We kept sneaking up on it [a suitable setup for his car] and getting better.

“But I feel like we let one get away from us tonight.”

Still, it was a far happier evening for Stewart than last year’s race here, when he missed the Chase altogether and lost an opportunity to defend his 2005 Nextel Cup championship.

All 12 drivers in the Chase will have their points reset at 5,000, with each driver getting 10 bonus points for each regular-season win.

So Johnson will go to Loudon, N.H., next Sunday for the opening round of the playoffs with 5,060. Gordon, who led the regular-season point standings, will be seeded second at 5,040 by virtue of his four wins. Stewart will be third, at 5,030, with three wins.

Kurt Busch and Carl Edwards will start tied for fourth, with two wins each.

Busch and Kevin Harvick, the only two drivers who came here vulnerable to dropping out of the top 12 and missing the Chase, ran well enough to keep Earnhardt locked out of the Chase, no matter what he did. Harvick finished seventh and Busch ninth.

Earnhardt, who’d come in as the last driver outside the top 12 with a mathematical chance to break into the playoffs, put up a crowd-pleasing fight all evening, running as high as second on a couple of occasions.

But he never led. In order to make the playoffs, he’d have had to win the race and lead the most laps while Harvick finished 33rd or worse and Busch 37th or worse.

Edwards briefly appeared to have a shot at a third win this season when he took the lead from the previously dominant Gordon on the 166th lap. But a blown engine only 15 laps later snuffed Edwards’ chance.

A glimmer of hope for the Chase emerged for Earnhardt after the halfway point in the race. He had just moved into second place when Busch collided with Juan Pablo Montoya, damaging the rear end and rear wing of Busch’s car and setting Montoya’s car afire.

Under the ensuing caution, Harvick’s car began overheating, but Harvick caught a break when the race was red-flagged to clean up debris from the wreck with 244 laps complete. Montoya was not injured in the fire.

The red flag, which lasted 8 minutes 18 seconds, built suspense for the crowd of 118,000, as they realized Busch and Harvick were in trouble and that Earnhardt was at the brink of challenging Gordon for the lead.

But after the restart with 250 laps complete, Earnhardt not only couldn’t run down Gordon, but lost second place to Stewart.

Earnhardt then lost third to Johnson, while Stewart took the lead from Gordon on the 270th lap.

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Ed Hinton covers auto racing for Tribune newspapers.