There wasn’t much doubt that Jimmie Johnson would win a record fourth-straight NASCAR championship. All he had to do was finish 25th or better and did with a fifth place.

Because of his polished nature he may have been un-appreciated in the NASCAR garage. Crew chief said, "That guy is the most underrated driver in this garage from the perspective of media recognition.”

Another under-appreciated Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota driver, Denny Hamlin, who had three DNF’s in NASCAR’s ten-race playoffs won his second race of the Chase, fourth of the season by over two-and-one half seconds over a resurgent duo of Richard Childress Racing

Johnson said, “thanks fans I owe you, it’s appreciated it’s going to take awhile to set in to do something that’s never been done is so awesome. To win four championships in eight years. I don’t know where to start.”

Mark Martin, who finished 12th, never led a lap, but came to the championship celebration to congratulate his teammate.

“I’m proud of the competitive effort (tonight), and sure we had a shot at winning. It was hair raising a times. I got trapped a couple of times where I wasn’t comfortable.”

Johnson continued, “I wasn’t sure I’d be in this position, late in the summer, I wasn’t sure we buckled down. Then (after a disaster in Texas) I (really) wasn’t sure how it was going to go after that.”

Hamlin said his car was good from the start. “Yeah, that’s the thing is we kept working on it. Me and Mike (Ford, crew chief) went back and forth with adjustments all day and just kept getting it a little bit better. Then we’d go take a step back and he’d (Mike Ford, crew chief) make it two steps better the next run.

“That shows what communication that we have between us and how strong our relationship is. I don’t see us getting any weaker anytime soon.”

Burton said, “all of us at RCR are encouraged (tonight). Obviously we aren’t where we want to be, we want to make up a lot of ground. Obviously, the competition is working hard. We have to be on full-alert, and hopefully we won’t make the same mistakes early next year.”

Harvick said “we wanted to win the race. On the second run, we lost some track position. The cars have shown the speed we need to have.”