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"Hopefully you didn't go into labor with this victory," he said to his wife. "Wait for me, I want to be a part of this."
Tony Stewart finished second and Busch was third. Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick rounded out the top five.
"When you struggle as bad as we have, it definitely wasn't going to hurt to go do something like that," Stewart said.
The 318-mile race was almost absent of cautions until the very end, with 201 straight laps of green flag racing. Kasey Kahne drove up front for most of the race and led 110 laps until engine problems knocked him out. Pole sitter Juan Pablo Montoya also was in contention until he was knocked out late by a lapped car.
Jeff Burton was a serious threat to win for the first time in two years until he made the decision not to pit with 17 laps left. He was the only lead lap driver not to pit and it cost him when he spun into Kyle Busch and took them both out of contention.
Kurt Busch knew his car wasn't strong enough to win and just hoped that late-race tap was enough to hold off Johnson.
"We did what we could to get the lead," he said. "I was just counting the laps and was like, man, there's not enough laps. The thought was, those 10 points for winning would look a lot better stacked in our deck than in his chip count."
Johnson has stormed back to championship form.
He has totally silenced the doubts that he was in a slump or appeared vulnerable during a five-race stretch from April to May. He has two straight wins for the second time this season and four straight top-six finishes.
"Yeah, I don't think we went anywhere," Johnson said. "It was easy to overreact because we had some poor finishes and that was due to overaggression."
One week after short tempers and rugged driving on the road course led to threats of payback, it was a tame race in New Hampshire. In this one, Montoya said Gordon "messed him up" but said he wasn't angry with him.
"I'm confused," Johnson said to laughter. "For a while there, our sport was boring. Then we wrecked the crap out of them last week and now all of a sudden we have a problem because everybody is wrecking, and now this week it wasn't as exciting."
[Associated Press;
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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