Jimmie Johnson had two late caution flags to deal with, but neither got in the way of his customary Dover excellence as he pulled away from Brad Keselowski on a restart with four laps to go to win his ninth race in 25 tries at Dover.
Oh, and it's his second straight win of the season. Told you that any "winless streak" chatter was a bunch of bunk.
After starting fourth, Johnson was never far from the front of the field and was the clear driver to beat after polesitter Kyle Busch retired because of a crash. From then on, while drivers like Kevin Harvick and Matt Kenseth spent some time at the front of the field, no one had a consistently good car like Johnson did.
It was a new car too, and one that crew chief Chad Knaus had faith in.
"He told me I'd love the car, and sure enough, we unloaded and he was right," Johnson said.
The only thing that might have gotten in his way was a Dover pothole. But instead of claiming Johnson, the chunk of concrete took out the front splitter of Jamie McMurray's car and stopped the race for over 20 minutes as track workers had to patch the hole.
Johnson was driving away from the field when a caution came out for debris with 35 laps to go. Johnson took four tires and restarted second behind Clint Bowyer, but made short work of him and ran away from the field once again.
When debris from a shredded tire from Casey Mears' car brought out the final caution, the drivers behind Johnson had yet another shot at him. But while it looked like Johnson glided through the final four laps, Keselowski pushed hard to no avail. He couldn't get close enough to the No. 48 to make a pass.
At one point in the second half of the race, all four of the Hendrick Motorsports cars were in the top five. However, Johnson was the only one to finish there. Dale Earnhardt Jr. was ninth, Jeff Gordon was 14th and Kasey Kahne was 19th.
Because of Gordon's finish, Kenseth, who finished third, takes over the points lead, two ahead of Gordon.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @NickBromberg
