FORT WORTH, Texas — Tony Stewart suddenly finds himself with an unexpected goal for the rest of 2006: Win out.

"It's a very good goal to shoot for right now, win these last two races and be able to say we've won the last four races of the Chase," Stewart said Sunday after making the Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway his second straight victory.

"It would be a saving grace to the season," added Stewart, who missed out on NASCAR's 10-man, 10-race playoffs by a mere 16 points and thought the rest of his season was going to be little more than an afterthought.

But, while the tense battles of the Chase rage on without him, Stewart is driving in a world of his own — way out in front of all the drama.

He made this one look almost too easy: "Smoke" led 278 of 339 laps on the 1.5-mile Texas oval, including the five extra laps because of a late caution, and often was so far ahead that he appeared to be all by himself on the track.

Most of the action was well behind him, where Jimmie Johnson quietly grabbed away the points lead from Matt Kenseth by 17 points with a second-place finish. Stewart easily raced away to his fifth win of the season and third in the eight Chase races.

"I thought we had the perfect car all day," Stewart said. "It was just an unbelievable day. I've been racing for 27 years and I can count on my hands the number of times I've had a car like that."

The race tightened up the championship, with Johnson, Kenseth, Dale Earnhardt Jr., rookie Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick separated by just 105 points with two races remaining. All of them finished among the top 12 Sunday.

"This was a wild night, but a good one for us, all in all," said Johnson, who came into the race trailing Kenseth by 26 points and now owns the series lead for the first time since August. "We just have to keep working, keep running hard and scoring points.

"We've had so much fun racing for this since we got down (in the points) early. We just want to keep having fun," said Johnson, who has three runner-up finishes and a win in his last four starts.

Harvick finished third, followed by Kyle Busch, rookie Clint Bowyer and Earnhardt, who had a miraculous day.

Earnhardt, still feeling the effects of the flu that dogged him all week, hung in at his favorite track and moved from fourth to third, 78 points behind Johnson.