WITNESSING PERFECTION; JIMMIE JOHNSON REVIVES HIS HOPES FOR A THIRD CONSECUTIVE TITLE.(NEWS)

Byline: PETE LYONS

FOR FANS OF 42 other drivers, the Pepsi 500 must have been hard to watch. But it was a great night for Jimmie Johnson boosters.

Starting from a convincing pole position, the No. 48 Chevrolet driver stayed out front for most of the race. Even when othersGreg Biffle, in particulargot ahead through quicker pit work, Johnson simply drove back on by.

Nothing went wrong with his Hendrick Motorsports car, he never made a mistake, and nobody hit him. It was a thoroughly convincing performance that thrust a third actor into this year's "Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch Show. As for those guys, they were never a factor and trailed home in sixth and seventh, respectively.

Auto Club (of Southern California) Speedway, a.k.a. Fontana, is a track where no pole winner had won in any of its 16 previous Cup races, which date to 1997. But bad statistical karma didn't daunt Johnson. The defending two-time Sprint Cup champ and winner of Fontana's 2007 autumn race drove a single, hurl-it-in-hard lap to seize pole position, by an impressive margin of 0.164 second.

A sixth of a second is impressive, you ask? It is when you look at the gaps between everyone else, in the hundredths all the way back through 42nd place. Johnson was the only driver to average more than 180 mph.

"I'm very proud of that lap, he declared, because he turned it in "the peak of the heat of a hot, muggy Friday afternoon.