Jimmie Johnson’s night got off to a bad start — and then it almost ended with a setback as well.
Instead, Johnson showed the mettle of a six-time champion. His focus netted a fourth-place finish in Saturday night’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, despite contact with competitors on two separate occasions.
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Johnson faced his first setback when he tagged Kyle Busch’s rear bumper on pit road on a stop during a Lap 25 caution. Johnson moved past that incident, in which he initially felt he had damaged his splitter, and raced into the top 10 for much of the race.
“We overcame a lot today,” he said. “On that first pit stop, everyone was checking up and I hammered the back of [Busch]. We had to fix damage on the nose, and it wasn’t pretty. There’s a big hole up front and that couldn’t have been helping us at all.”
Not that it seemed to slow him too much. Johnson was hampered later by a pit sequence in which a caution came out during stops. Johnson’s Hendrick Motorsports team waited through a NASCAR video review to see their position before learning teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. earned the free pass, not Johnson.
After the field was sorted, Johnson took a wave around during that stop, putting him at the tail end of the lead lap in 15th. He had worked his way back toward the front again again when he roared onto the bumper of Austin Dillon, who slid across in front of Johnson as the two made contact, sparking a 13-car crash.
Johnson dug in and rallied once more for another strong finish at Texas, a track Johnson has six wins and 20 top-10 finishes at.
“There’s a lot of fight in this Lowe’s team today,” he said. “I’m thankful for the great equipment and the fight that these guys have because with all the damage and adversity we went through tonight, to come home fourth is really good.”