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Call Jimmie Johnson “Cream”. It’s Chase time again and, again, Johnson is rising to the top of, well, everything.

Sunday afternoon, in the fourth of 10 playoff races, Johnson moved to the front of the field in the Pepsi 500 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif. and won for the second time in the last  three races.

In doing so, he moved past Hendrick Motorsports teammate Mark Martin to the top of the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship.

Johnson, who has won the last three Sprint Cup championships and is looking to add a historic fourth straight title, will arrive at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C. next weekend with a 12-point lead over Martin. Martin finished fourth at Auto Club.

“What an awesome car, what an awesome day,” Johnson, who led a race-best 126 laps, said.

And the points lead?

“Awesome. That’s what we want.”

Jeff Gordon finished second but actually lost two points to the lead – he is 105 back with six races to go in the season. He did, however, moved from seventh to fifth in the point standings.

Juan Pablo Montoya finished third in the race and is now 50 behind Johnson and in third place in the Chase.

Tony Stewart, who won last weekend at Kansas Speedway, finished fifth Sunday. Stewart, who had to overcome a speeding penalty which put him a lap off the pace Sunday, is fourth in points – 84 behind Johnson.

Johnson clearly had the best car in the second half of the race. He was able to move out to huge leads and only a couple of late-race wrecks injected some suspense into the finish. But on each of the ensuing restarts, Johnson was either able to keep or retake the lead.

The last restart, which came with three laps to go and was forced by a multi-car crash and a resulting red flag, saw him hold off Gordon and then moved to a comfortable victory.

The victory was Johnson’s fifth to the season and 45th of his career.

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