Johnson escapes after rare start gaffe

Jimmie Johnson's day could have been over before it really started at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

It technically could have ended at the beginning when Johnson was penalized for jumping the initial start of the Overton's 301, beating pole-sitter Martin Truex Jr. to the start/finish line. The seven-time champion admitted with a laugh he just "got it wrong," having not started on the front row in quite a while.

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Johnson fortunately stayed on the lead lap, but fell to last on the leaderboard after serving a pass-through penalty. At the lap 35 competition caution, Johnson was 29th. He finished Stage 1 in 12th place.

"I went off the flag and forgot that the pole-sitter has to be the first one to the stripe," Johnson said after finishing 10th. "So, I'll take responsibility one that one. And the, we had an OK finish. We had decent short run speed. We would just fall off too hard. I really thought we were going to be in a position for a top five, but we ended up 10th."

It's a finish Johnson said he would take considering how he felt it is "nearly impossible" to rebound from the back of the field.

"Unless you're the No. 78 (Martin Truex Jr.) or the No. 42 (Kyle Larson)," Johnson stated.

Locked into the playoffs on three wins, Johnson earned additional points Sunday by finishing the second stage in fifth place. As the regular season winds down, Johnson would be among the top seeds on the playoff grid as he looks for a record-breaking eighth championship.

To do so, Johnson will have to visit New Hampshire again. Whether he and the No. 48 team learned anything for that race will depend on if the speedway puts anything down on the surface again like they did this past weekend with PJ1.

"The cars require a much different setup with that [PJ1 substance] down," Johnson said. "So, it depends on what they do when we come back. But, we had a decent day. It was a good day for the Lowe's Chevrolet. We had great pit stops on pit road.

"All in all, we had a lot of good takeaways from the weekend."