Full Throttle

A loose tire on pitroad cost Keven Harvick a trip to the back of the field at Fontana but it allowed Jamie McMurray’s crewman Adam Mosser to put on a ballerina act by as he leapt over the hood of the No. 29 RCR machine.

That stunt is Fontana’s Move of the Race.

That accolade aside, all is right with the NASCAR world, right if you’re a Jimmie Johnson fan. Not so much if you’re not.

“Today fortune came our way,” Johnson said. We hit pit road and the caution came out and gave us track position. We lost the handle in the second half of the race. We were making gains coming back but a lot of other guys were ahead of us and knew it would be tough to pass them. I’m not going to lie, the fact that we were on pit road gave us track position and I drove my butt off.”

Fortunate indeed, that very timely stop jumped the eventual winner from 6th position to eventually leading 110 of the 250 total laps.

RCR proved they may be back in the fight after a dismal 2009, Kevin Harvick was second and may have tracked Johnson down if not for skimming the wall with a couple laps left. Teammate Jeff Burton was third, his best finish at Fontana since 1999, and Clint Bowyer was eighth.

“I was running the top there, and Jimmie saw me coming and he just moved up. I got tight, just scrubbed the wall, knocked the right front fender, and that was it for me.”

Harvick also had the best quote of the day.

“Those guys are lucky,” he said about Johnson, “they have a golden horseshoe stuck up their ass.”

You know what they say “it’s better to be lucky than good,” but when you’re both as Johnson’s team has been the results can be, and are devastating.

Roush Fenway seems to be on a bit of an upswing also, with three of his Fords finishing in the top 13, Matt Kenseth was seventh, Greg Biffle 10th and Carl Edwards 13th.

Red Bull Racing with Scott Speed and Brian Vickers were 11th and 12th, respectively, in Toyotas. The team has made enormous strides since its inception in 2007 and could be a dark horse for the Chase.

There, I said it, Speed may actually do something.

On the down side, Dale Jr. is consistent, consistently bad at Fontana. In 17 Cup races at the track, he has eight finishes of 30th or worse, including the four DNF’s. He finished 12 laps down to Johnson in 32nd.

As seems to be the norm at Auto Club plenty of engines expired Sunday. Marcos Ambrose, Martin Truex Jr. and Juan Montoya all had their Toyota’s puke their guts on the 2 mile oval.

Las Vegas Motor Speedway is the site of next week’s third race of the season. Last year Kyle Busch went to victory lane in a race that also saw Jimmie Johnson finish 24th.

So maybe there’s hope for the Johnson haters.

Or maybe not.