LONG POND - The 120th lap came and went, much the same way the first 119 did. The same cars storming by. The same running order. Practically the same lap on a constant film loop. It was every bit the B movie with no plot and a predictable ending flickering on the screen.
In the third row of the press box at Pocono Raceway, as it all played out on the 2.5-mile triangular track below, a reporter sat. His arms folded in front of him on the table. His head bowed. His eyes closed. Amid the race day noise, a peaceful Poconos slumber.
This is a sport that guarantees speed and sound and control and bravado.
But when you get the same race team providing the most of all of it on a given day, it doesn't guarantee you excitement.
In every way, the sport's greatest active champion was put-you-to-sleep good Sunday. Jimmie Johnson grabbed the lead by the throat on Lap 10, and only circumstance managed to wrest it from him after that. But nothing could pry it from his clutches at the end.
He led 128-of-160 laps, which means he set the pace for 80 percent of the Party in the Poconos 400. The other 20 percent, he spent chasing the leader down, a cheetah hunting the gazelles. He won going away.
Indeed, it was a no-contest. Man against boys. The very best drivers in the world being schooled by one of the very best race teams in the sport's history.
"Jimmie's switched on right now," said Chad Knaus, his crew chief. "He's as good or better than I've ever seen him."
NASCAR racing is a strange thing, sometimes. It's a sport that has this sense of simplicity about it, the idea that a group of good-old boys with wrenches and pliers can get under a car, dirty their hands and build a machine that can capture so many imaginations on a race track.
But really, it's beyond complicated. It's a sport controlled by the most up-to-date technology available. It's a sport driven not just by superstars behind the wheel, but engineering geniuses in body shops and engine shops, looking for any legal way to build a motor or bend metal to their distinct advantage. Because doing so just a little bit differently might give you that one tenth of one second you need to go from a middle-of-the-pack car on race day to one of the fastest.
And after they do that, it isn't even just about speed anyway.
Because Sunday, there were cars at least as fast as Johnson's sleek No. 48 Chevrolet. Ryan Newman's No. 39 ran even with Johnson's, in the middle stages of a race when he left everybody else in the dust. Kurt Busch, in the nondescript No. 78, started 20th but charged his way to the top 10, where he raced most of the day on the way to a seventh-place finish.
Neither were any match for Johnson, though. In fact, when the green flag was out and he wasn't driving into the pits, no driver managed to pass Johnson's car after he got the lead. Not one.
Pocono Raceway itself has to get some credit for that.
Around here, there are three bonafide summer traditions: fireworks on the Fourth of July; allergy battles; NASCAR drivers extolling the virtues of "clean air." At Pocono, clean air separates the great from the really good.
For being bad, fast machines, Sprint Cup cars are finicky. They run like joggers run. Send them out in the smog, on a humid, sticky day, and they will do fine. Send them on a run in the fresh air, and they'll do noticeably better.
A fast car with the lead will run better than a fast car - maybe even a faster car - in traffic. Especially at hulking Pocono, where the leader not only gets the benefit of clean air, but miles of unadulterated track in front of him to build speed.
Add that to the fact that only one caution flag fell in the first 125 laps, and Johnson became a juggernaut. He had clean air and smooth track and nobody to worry about driving around. When you have that, you have it all.
"Around here, if you can get the clean air on a short run, especially with the series of cautions we had, it would have been tough to pass," Johnson said. "Even with being in the position of having the dominant car, I didn't want to have to run second and have to worry about going by somebody."
No, Johnson didn't necessarily have the fastest car. But he had everything else. He had the clean air. He had the prime position on late restarts brought on by the flurry of caution activity that was really the only thing that made Pocono's Party interesting. He had the best handling car, which third-place finisher Dale Earnhardt Jr. said was likely the biggest difference.
In other words, the five-time champion could put his 3,300-pound car, traveling at better than 180 mph, wherever he wanted to on the track.
That came in to play in two very specific, and key, spots: On those restarts at the end, and coming out of the treacherous third turn, which set him up for all that success sucking in the clean air down the massive 3,740-foot front straightaway.
"That's where I thought he was stronger than the field," Earnhardt said. "Jimmie beat us bad during Turn 3."
Second-place finisher Greg Biffle knows that, too.
"I felt like I was as good as the 48, or close to him, in (Turns) 1 and 2," Biffle said. "But in three, he was just really driving away from everybody."
That's why, despite finishing second, Biffle called his race "a struggle." That's why Earnhardt Jr. said he felt it would be "a bonus" to have even made a run at Johnson and the lead on restarts. Somehow, Earnhardt Jr. started sixth, ran in the top 5 for the last 150 laps, finished third and never made a serious run at Johnson.
That's dominance.
Add it all up, and it leads to that predictable end, a win so convincing, it could put anyone to sleep.
Knaus summed up Pocono as track that tests a car's handling and aerodynamics, horsepower and drivetrain, fuel mileage and care takers.
But on a perfect Sunday for the perfect combination between car and track, nobody and nothing tested his driver.
(Collins is a columnist for The Times-Tribune. Contact him at dcollins@timesshamrock.com)