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On a weekend when there was plenty of reason to feel overheated, El Cajon driver Jimmie Johnson remained one cool customer.
Any talk that Johnson's NASCAR Nextel Cup season was fading away was silenced by his victory Sunday in the Sharp Aquos 500 at California Speedway. Johnson capped a homecoming week by posting his first win since May 6 and his circuit-leading fifth win of the year.
"If you have four, five bad races in a row, you can lose a lot of ground, and that's where I was concerned," Johnson told reporters after Sunday's race in Fontana. "But we really haven't had a bad car.
"We've been close, we've been running good. I think of Dover and somewhere else in there, Chicago, where we've been running good but have problems. Traditionally we get off to a good start, run slow in the summer and have problems, then come back."
Johnson got last week off to a good start, participating in the inaugural Jimmie Johnson Foundation golf tournament on Wednesday, a day after a dinner and live auction raised more than $200,000 for the foundation. The golf tournament, hosted by Johnson and his wife, Chandra, included fellow drivers Boris Said, Kyle Petty, Bobby Labonte, Brian Vickers and Juan Pablo Montoya, who were joined by singer/actor Nick Lachey and more than 200 other golfers at the Riverwalk Golf Club in Mission Valley.
The dinner, golf tournament and other functions sponsored by California Speedway are expected to bring in more than $500,000 for the foundation, which lists the San Diego Habitat for Humanity among its beneficiaries.
"Chandra and I are blown away," Johnson said. "We are still working on the final numbers, but we have definitely exceeded our fundraising goal."
At the track, where temperatures soared above triple digits for all three days of qualifying and racing, Johnson claimed some of the momentum that had slipped away to hard-charging drivers Kurt Busch and Tony Stewart, who accounted for five wins in the previous six races leading to last weekend.
"We really needed this win because the 2 car (Busch) and Tony have just been coming on," said Johnson's boss, team owner Rick Hendrick of Hendrick Motorsports. "It's probably going to be one of the toughest chases, with a lot of good cars. It's going to be a dogfight."
The 10-race Chase for the Cup begins after this weekend's Chevy Rock and Roll 400 at Richmond International Raceway. Johnson is sixth in the Nextel Cup points standings, with the top 12 drivers advancing to the Chase.
Much of the other talk around California Speedway over the weekend concerned the scorching weather, NASCAR's move of its annual Labor Day race from Darlington, S.C., to Southern California, and one of the worst-kept secrets in recent NASCAR history: the decision by Joe Gibbs Racing to shift from Chevrolets to Toyotas beginning next year.
The hot weather seemed to affect fans more than drivers, leaving thousands of empty seats in California Speedway's 92,000-seat main grandstand.
NASCAR opted for glitz over grits when it left Darlington, home of the annual Southern 500, NASCAR's oldest continuous race until the race date was moved to Southern California in 2004.
California Speedway now hosts two races, in February and September. Before 2004, the track hosted one NASCAR race in late April.
"We've talked about this before, and if I could pick any date, I'm going to pick April and October, but so would every other racetrack on the circuit," track president Gillian Zucker said while meeting with reporters after Sunday's race. "And I don't get to pick."
Fans who stayed home missed one of the best NASCAR races ever staged at California Speedway, with a record-breaking 16 different race leaders and a record-tying 30 lead changes.
"We put on a great race, from a competitor's standpoint," Johnson said.
Said Zucker: "I think the world has turned upside-down when people are calling Bristol racing boring and California Speedway one of the best races of the year."
The weekend before Fontana, Carl Edwards won at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee on a reconstructed surface, where there were only 13 lead changes among eight drivers, albeit in a 266.5-mile race on a half-mile track.
The other big post-race news was the move to Toyota by Joe Gibbs Racing, which will put Stewart, Denny Hamlin and newly acquired Kyle Busch behind the wheel of Toyota Camrys next year. The official announcement was made Wednesday by team president J.D. Gibbs.
"I'm really excited about this," Stewart said after the announcement was made. "I feel like the only way you can constantly stay ahead of the game is by putting yourself in the position of being leaders and not followers. That's why I joined Joe Gibbs Racing in the first place."
This season marked the Nextel Cup debut of Toyota, which includes three teams at Michael Waltrip Racing and two each at Bill Davis Racing and Red Bull Racing. The decision to switch for next year's renamed Sprint Cup season ends a 16-year partnership between JGR and General Motors.
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