Jimmie Johnson wins record-tying seventh Sprint Cup Championship

Jimmie Johnson won the Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday to join stock auto legends Petty and Earnhardt on the top rung of NASCAR’S ladder.

It would take NASCAR overtime to decide the victor of this race and championship.

Kyle Larson is leading the 400-mile race.

“Oh my gosh, there is no, no way on earth”, Johnson said when asked if he thought a seventh title was possible. Carl Edwards, who ranks second in average finish (9.2) at Homestead-Miami Speedway, got a head start over the three remaining drivers when he tested last month at the venue.

His No. 48 vehicle qualified to start 14th, but NASCAR decided Johnson’s crew made “unapproved adjustments” after Sunday’s prerace inspection. He led Busch and Logano on the restart, then grabbed the race lead on another restart after another caution.

It continued with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. blowing a tire and bringing out another caution with five laps left. Logano finally acted like he was racing for a title, and Edwards was a class act afterwards.

“It’s big. It has a different meaning”, Johnson said. The one thing that we have in our corner is we have Jimmie Johnson. “I can’t see my auto, so I don’t know how bad it was”.

“I just thought I had just a little more time, but he drove down as far as a guy could be expected to drive down and that’s how it ended”. Edwards was the most dominant Chase driver.

Johnson didn’t have the fastest or best vehicle on the day, but he battled through all sorts of adversity and took advantage when a late-race wreck blew the field wide open and prompted the restart that led him to the 2016 Sprint Cup Championship. He quickly made his way toward the front after starting 40th, and took advantage of two late-race opportunities to put himself in position to win.

“Just proud of Jimmie”, Earnhardt said. So not really anything I could do to maintain his distance behind me. “If my dad were here, he’d happily welcome him”.

In less than 30 laps, he was sniffing the top-10. This year marked his first title under the Chase Championship 4 elimination format that began in 2014. At various times during the race, Carl Edwards, Joey Logano and Kyle Busch all seemed like locks to finish second and win the title.

The chaos definitely benefited Suarez, who passed Sadler low and pulled away from the field. Edwards hit an inside wall, then an outside wall. The number seven has a very special place in my heart with Rick Hendrick (car owner), as a lot of people know.

“I was glad to race with him on the day he got his seventh”, Stewart said. At one point a jack-man on his crew slipped in from of his auto, costing Johnson a second or two on his restart – a huge deal in this sport.

He started second for the final restart and easily – and surprisingly – cleared Larson by the second turn. “He said if I want it back, I can have it back, but I promised I’d give him a helmet”. I was completed floored.

And so Jimmie Johnson joins the King and the Intimidator at the top of the NASCAR mountain.

Stewart and Edwards finished tied in the final Sprint Cup Series points standings – a first in NASCAR history – and Stewart took the tiebreaker based on his five victories to Edwards’ one.

Nearly immediately, Petty and the Earnhardt family reacted.

Petty, who won his titles in the 1960s and 1970s, said in a statement: “Records are a mark and they set something for everyone to shoot at”. “Jimmie and his team have done that tonight”. We got behind there and tried something to make ground and had to run 60 laps on a set of tires.

At the age of 41, Johnson becomes the youngest seven-time champion.

We saw what Edwards and Logano would do.

Kelly Earnhardt Miller, daughter of the late champion, and his son, Dale Earnhardt Jr., both offered their congratulations through Twitter. His win was the first of the weekend for Joe Gibbs Racing, which has two drivers – Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards – vying for the Sprint Cup championship Sunday.