Johnson not optimistic about passing Stewart

~ The driver of the No. 48 car seems destined for his third straight runner-up finish.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Jimmie Johnson has accepted the inevitable. Unless Tony Stewart makes his first major mistake in the Chase for the Championship, the best Johnson can do is finish second in the race for the Nextel Cup title.

"He is in control of the championship in my mind, and I hate to admit that," Johnson lamented. "If I go out and do all that I can and lead the race and lead the most laps, then it's just in his hands from there as to where he finishes and what happens."

Alas, all Stewart has to do to win his second championship is finish ninth or better in Sunday's season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. If he can do that, it won't matter where any other driver finishes -- the title automatically will be Stewart's.

Only three drivers -- Johnson, Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle -- have a mathematical chance of catching him, and all know they'll need some intervention. It's a far cry from last season, when five drivers had a legitimate chance at the title heading into the finale.

Johnson was one of them, beginning that race 18 points behind Kurt Busch. He did everything he could and finished second in the race, only to fall eight points shy of beating Busch for the title.

For Johnson, it was his second straight year finishing second in the points. Barring a shocking result in Sunday's race, he's on the verge of making it three in a row -- and Johnson knows how bad it will feel to watch someone else accept the trophy at the year-end banquet once again.

"We've been so close. To be sitting below the [banquet] stage and looking up again for the third time, if that's the case, is going to be tough," he said. "We really, really, really want a championship, and we feel that we've done a great job really every year.

"To come up short, if we do come up short like the last two seasons, that's going to be tough. But at the same time, we're doing everything that we can and we just haven't been able to close the gap."

Truthfully, Johnson wasn't really that close in 2003 when Matt Kenseth wrapped up his title a week before the finale.

It made his Hendrick Motorsports team hungry to take the next step, and it opened the 2004 season as the team to beat. Johnson dominated almost the entire year until a late-summer stumble knocked him out of the points lead.

He's not in the same position this year to race for the title. It's Stewart's to win or lose, and that reality has Johnson, who is 52 points behind Stewart, second-guessing himself.

Johnson's only mistake of the Chase was in October at Talladega, where he was caught up in two different accidents. The second wreck ended his day early with a 31st-place finish that dropped him to fourth in the standings. Stewart finished second that day.

"I look at that and wish maybe we played the strategy that [Dale Jarrett] did, where he sat at the back and stayed out of trouble and then came through and was even able to win the race," Johnson said. "We considered a lot of things at Talladega, and we felt like the best thing for our team was to race for the win and to be up front and stay out of trouble that way, and it didn't really play out."

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Driver standings

1. Tony Stewart 6,415

2. Jimmie Johnson 6,363

3. Carl Edwards 6,328

4. Greg Biffle 6,313

5. Mark Martin 6,253

6. Ryan Newman 6,208

7. Matt Kenseth 6,187

8. Rusty Wallace 6,016

9. Kurt Busch 5,974

10. Jeremy Mayfield 5,939

11. Jeff Gordon 4,031

12. Jamie McMurray 4,021

13. Elliott Sadler 3,990

14. Kevin Harvick 3,925

15. Joe Nemechek 3,857

16. Dale Jarrett 3,848

17. Brian Vickers 3,813

18. Jeff Burton 3,715

19. Kyle Busch 3,713

20. Dale Earnhardt Jr. 3,674