Johnson began the race in the 20th spot and endured a number of setbacks to come home with a ninth place finish in Sunday's Amp Energy 500.

By lap 25, Johnson had fallen a lap down from the leaders. Things weren't looking so good for the driver looking to capture his third NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship in a row.

Adding to the mix, a chunk of David Reutimann's blown tire hit the No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet breaking one of the splitter braces.

Not letting that knock his hopes to the ground, Johnson rallied back to get his 18th top-10 of the season.

“We had our fair share of problems today,” Johnson said. “We didn’t have speed in the car like we wanted to. We’ve got to figure out what happened there. It started yesterday with qualifying. We weren’t sure what was going on and today, the car was pretty flat still. I lost the draft at the start of the race because I couldn’t hang on and then from there we got our lap back and dodged wrecks and raced really hard.

“We had great pit calls and all those things. It was a great team effort for all of us today.”

Johnson arrived at Talladega Superspeedway with a small 10 point lead over Carl Edwards. With how the Roush Fenway group have been performing it didn't look like that was going to last long, but a wreck caused by Edwards put him in 29th place. Edwards' finish gave Johnson a 77 point lead in the point standings.

“We just keep racing,” Johnson said of his lead. “And we race smart and we do what we can. I’ve realized in the past that the whole sport falls into a comfort zone and thinks that 60, 80, or 100 points is a big gap. But truly, that can go away in a hurry. So, I’m happy that it is what it is, but I know there is a lot of racing ahead of us.”