Johnson

LOUDON, N.H. — Jimmie Johnson sent the ultimate payback to Kurt Busch.

Johnson answered Busch's bump with a late nudge of his own that let him take the lead with two laps left and win the Sprint Cup race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway Sunday for his fifth victory of the season.

With four straight Cup championships on his resume, Johnson has little left to prove. At the end of this one, Johnson sent a message that he's no pushover when the checkered flag is at stake.

"I don't want people to think, 'Oh, I can knock the 48 out of the way because he's not going to wreck me,"' Johnson said.

Busch grabbed the lead with about seven laps left when he nudged Johnson in the left rear. Johnson ran down Busch and quickly got side by side to energize what had been a lackluster race on the 1.058-mile track.

Johnson put a little bump on Busch to move him up the track, allowing the No. 48 to slip underneath for the victory that tied Denny Hamlin for the series lead.

"I thought, I don't care if I win this race or not," Johnson said. "I don't care if I finish this damn thing. I'm running into him and get by him one way or another."

Johnson had some concerns about the aggressive move.

"I'm not good at doing that stuff," Johnson said. "Usually I crash myself in the process. So I tried it once and moved him. The second time I moved him out of the way and got by him."

Busch said his intention was to pass Johnson cleanly until he realized he could just push him out of his path. Johnson said he'd be surprised if Busch tried to purposely wreck him.

"If that's his intentions, that'd be the first time in nine years racing with him I'd experienced that," Johnson said. "It definitely changes the way I race with him from that point on. I hate that he felt I wasn't going to wreck him, because that was my goal, to wreck him."

"Strike that from the comments, he didn't really mean that," Johnson crew chief Chad Knaus interjected.

Johnson didn't believe there would be further retaliation.

"He didn't wreck me, so at the end of the day I guess I didn't owe him," Johnson said.

The four-time defending champion pulled away to win his second straight race after taking the checkered flag last week on the road course at Infineon Raceway.

Tony Stewart finished second and Busch was third. Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick rounded out the top five.

"When you struggle as bad as we have, it definitely wasn't going to hurt to go do something like that," Stewart said.

The 318-mile race was almost absent of cautions until the very end, with 201 straight laps of green flag racing. Kasey Kahne drove up front for most of the race and led 110 laps until engine problems knocked him out. Pole sitter Juan Pablo Montoya also was in contention until he was knocked out late by a lapped car.