Allen Johnson's victory marked the fifth of his career out of 11 final rounds. The last time he visited the winner's circle was Seattle of 2006.

No other win has meant as much to Johnson as this one did.

"It's just a fairy tale weekend," said Johnson, seated beside his dad and team engine builder Roy, who had suffered a heart attack earlier this year, and has recovered fully. "I'm sure Dad will second that. For this being a Mopar event, we were the fastest car, No. 1 qualifier: everything you can do we did this weekend and it feels really good."

What could have been a tragedy provided a reprieve from fate for the Johnsons.

"We were lucky we were in the right spot at the right time," Johnson said of Roy's attack in Phoenix. "It worked out that he's more healthy now than he was before then. So, you can tell he's smarter (because of the way the car's running.)

"That one race was a setback for him and the team. We've just come back even stronger and everybody's bound together and we tested our butts off and they put in long hours at the shop on the engines and it's just all starting to come together.

"We've been a win waiting to happen since the first of the year and just hadn't gotten a break. In the finals we got a break. We probably wounded our motor in the finals because we only ran 192 mph. Fortunately, Ron broke a transmission, so there's the break we were looking for.

Allen Johnson's victory marked the fifth of his career out of 11 final rounds. The last time he visited the winner's circle was Seattle of 2006.

No other win has meant as much to Johnson as this one did.

"It's just a fairy tale weekend," said Johnson, seated beside his dad and team engine builder Roy, who had suffered a heart attack earlier this year, and has recovered fully. "I'm sure Dad will second that. For this being a Mopar event, we were the fastest car, No. 1 qualifier: everything you can do we did this weekend and it feels really good."

What could have been a tragedy provided a reprieve from fate for the Johnsons.

"We were lucky we were in the right spot at the right time," Johnson said of Roy's attack in Phoenix. "It worked out that he's more healthy now than he was before then. So, you can tell he's smarter (because of the way the car's running.)

"That one race was a setback for him and the team. We've just come back even stronger and everybody's bound together and we tested our butts off and they put in long hours at the shop on the engines and it's just all starting to come together.

"We've been a win waiting to happen since the first of the year and just hadn't gotten a break. In the finals we got a break. We probably wounded our motor in the finals because we only ran 192 mph. Fortunately, Ron broke a transmission, so there's the break we were looking for.

"Going into the finals we knew it was going to be tough. He'd been fast all day. I had to do my job as a driver and the car and the motor had to do their jobs. Fortunately, we got by even though we didn't do our jobs. But it would've been close."