Johnson won’t let push come to shove

Jimmie Johnson withstood teammate Jeff Gordon’s bumping and banging for much of the last 53 laps Sunday in Martinsville, Tenn., and held him off by a front bumper to win for the third time in six NASCAR Nextel Cup races this year.

The Hendrick Motorsports teammates provided a stirring duel at the end of the second Car of Tomorrow race.

For the last 53 laps, the show was all Johnson and Gordon, who tried everything he could short of wrecking his teammate, but couldn’t make the pass.

Johnson won for the 26th time in his career and extended Gordon’s winless streak to 24.

“I’m speechless. I’ve looked up to him my whole career, before I even was back here racing. I’ve looked up to him and knew how good he was at Martinsville,” Johnson said of Gordon, whose seven career wins at Martinsville are the most among active racers.

“That was probably the hardest driving I’ve ever done,” Johnson said.

The margin of victory was 0.065 seconds.

Gordon was upset at the finish that he wasn’t able to make the pass.

“The only way I could get by him was to wreck him, but he’s my teammate and I tell you what, there’s going to be some interesting racing going forward because he blocked me really bad,” Gordon said. “I thought I had a chance at him a couple times, but he shut the door on me pretty good. … He did exactly what he should have done.”

Denny Hamlin finished third, followed by Kyle Busch, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Burton and Tony Stewart as Chevys swept the top seven spots.

“We’re tired of running so good here and not winning,” Earnhardt said.

Gordon led three times for 92 laps, but none of the last 113. The first 10 of those were led by teammate Kyle Busch, but Johnson passed him on lap 388 and kept going, giving the Hendrick teams both Car of Tomorrow victories. Busch won last week.

Indy Racing League

Helio Castroneves cruised to an easy victory Sunday, running a nearly perfect race to win the Honda St. Petersburg Grand Prix for the second straight year at St. Petersburg, Fla.

Castroneves led for all but five of the 100 laps on the 1.8-mile, 14-turn street circuit. He pulled away from runner-up Scott Dixon on restarts after several caution flags and won by 0.6007 seconds – about eight car-lengths. Tony Kanaan finished third for the same 1-2-3 finish as last year.

NHRA

At the O’Reilly NHRA Spring Nationals in Baytown, Texas, J.R. Todd won the Top Fuel division, beating Joe Hartley with a quarter-mile run at 4.603 seconds and 313.80 mph.

Ron Capps won his second straight race to take the lead in the Funny Car standings.