Johnson earns first win of NASCAR year
Seven-time Cup series champion says he ‘remembered how to drive’
FORT WORTH — Jimmie Johnson got his first win of the season, going from the back for the field to Victory Lane on Sunday at a Texas track that has changed since his first six wins there.
Johnson, who last year won his record-tying seventh NASCAR Cup Series season championship, charged under Joey Logano with 16 laps to go. The Hendrick Motorsports driver kept his No. 48 Chevrolet in front for his 81st career race win.
“I guess I remembered how to drive; and I guess this team remembered how to do it,” Johnson said. “I’m just real proud of this team. What a tough track and tough conditions. We were really in our wheelhouse and we were just able to execute all day.”
This was the first Cup race in Texas since the 1½-mile facility was completely repaved and changes made to Turns 1 and 2 earlier this year. It was Johnson’s seventh victory at Texas, six in the last 10 races there.
Kyle Larson, the season points leader, finished second for the fourth time this year, but also won at California. Logano, polesitter Kevin Harvick and Dale Earnhardt Jr. rounded out the top five.
Johnson had to start at the back of the 40-car field because of a tire change after a spin in qualifying. He had qualified 24th.
“Oh, probably on the second or third run I knew we were in good shape. From there, off we went,” he said. “It was so tough those first 23 laps in traffic. The air was very turbulent, the track wasn’t very clean.”
Johnson’s only top-10 finish in the first six races of the season had been ninth at Phoenix. Earnhardt, his Hendrick teammate, had his first top-five finish since a runner-up at Pocono last June, not long before he missed the last half of the season because of lingering concussions symptoms.
Ryan Blaney won the first two stages and gave Wood Brothers Racing, the oldest active team in NASCAR, its longest front-running car in a race in 35 years. The 23-year-old Blaney, who led 148 laps, went on to finish 12th.
The Wood Brothers team was formed in 1950, but hadn’t had a driver lead at least 100 laps in a race since Neil Bonnett in 1982.
INDYCAR: In Long Beach, Calif., James Hinchcliffe raced to his first victory since his near-fatal accident in 2015 by hanging on for a three-lap shootout to the finish Sunday on the streets of Long Beach.
Hinchcliffe had two strong late restarts to win in a Honda for Schmidt-Peterson Motorsports. It was the Canadian’s first victory since at New Orleans a month before he nearly bled to death in an accident during practice for the Indianapolis 500.
Sebastien Bourdais followed his season-opening victory at St. Pete with a second-place finish to give Honda a 1-2 podium finish.
Josef Newgarden was the highest finishing Team Penske driver and was third in a Chevrolet.
Scott Dixon was fourth in a Ganassi Honda, and defending race winner Simon Pagenaud drove from last to fifth.