CHAMPIONSHIP PEDIGREE; JIMMIE JOHNSON REMINDS THE CUP FIELD THAT IT'S HIS TIME OF YEAR.(NEWS)

Byline: CURT CAVIN

NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series did not turn with the final lap of the Camping World RV 400 at Kansas Speedway, but the year's final seven races should be fun if this was a preview of the drama to come.

Jimmie Johnson led Carl Edwards by six-tenths of a second with two laps remaining before Edwards charged back. He snuggled up to Johnson's rear bumper on the last lap and boldly dove under him in turn three, bonsai-style.

The move is called a "slide job on the dirt tracks where Edwards was raised in the country's heartland, and he nearly executed it with perfection. But Edwards missed the corner and slid to the wall. Amazingly, he kept going, wicked scrape and all, to finish second.

Johnson, a product of off-road racing, waited for the desperate move to play out, dove to the inside and won his fifth race of the season to take the points lead from Edwards.

"I knew he was a dirt-track racer and the slide job was coming, so I just got ready for it, said Johnson, who scored his 38th career win. "He went in there probably 30 car-lengths too far and pounded the wall.

"Watching him, I was more impressed that he didn't wreck and that he stayed in the gas. And I'm like, "Oh, yeah, this is for the checkers.' "