Not that Jimmie Johnson wasn't equally dedicated, but there were two people so intent upon seeing the No. 48 Chevrolet in Victory Lane on Saturday night that the 27-year-old California boy was sure he wasn't going to have a moment's rest. Not the night before the race, nor the moments leading up to it.

When Johnson won -- nay, dominated -- the first two segments of The Winston last year, losing the all-star race in the third and final segment, it convinced a few people that he was capable of beating the best of the best.

Among them: His crew chief Chad Knaus and Lowe's Motor Speedway president H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler.

Knaus told Johnson a few weeks before the event that he thought his boy could make the entire team all-star champs. Wheeler revealed to all of NASCAR Nation the week before the race that Johnson would do just that, announcing Johnson as his annual pick to win the event.

And so it was at 3 a.m. early Saturday morning, as Johnson tried to get some sleep, that he was awakened by the sound of his telephone.

"It's Chad," the voice on the other end said. Knaus was just calling to chat about the next day's race setup.

The next day, baggy-eyed from interrupted slumber, Wheeler was waiting.

"Humpy, he puts a lot of pressure on you," Knaus said. "He even came down and talked to Jimmie and me before the start of the race to make sure we that understood how we were supposed to win this thing.

"He was serious. He looked Jimmie right in the eye. I haven't even looked at Jimmie like Humpy looked at him."

It was serious business to Wheeler, who has often correctly picked The Winston winner. But, what nobody stopped to ask was how serious it was to Johnson. After all, he did dominate the opening two segments. And the loss came, in part, because of it.

"I really felt like we got bit by the inversion last year," Johnson said. "We had a great car, and we could have won that race. Track position just killed us."

Had he finished lower in the second segment, then when the field was inverted for the final round -- sending the 10th-place finisher from the second round to the first starting spot in the third and so on and so forth, he might have had time to reach the front.

As it was, he finished the second segment first and started the third in 10th. He got as high as fifth. But anything but first is just a loss.

	Jimmie Johnson was impressive in winning The Winston on Saturday night.

Johnson was determined to improve.

"I try to hang onto the mistakes that I make and learn something," Johnson said. "You just learn from mistakes. You have to play strategy in this race, and we were able to do it this time. I'm just very happy that it all turned out."

And it all turned out, mainly, because Johnson corrected many of the mistakes he had been holding onto from the past.

For instance, he made sure not to finish too high in the second segment and also made sure that the car was neither too loose nor too tight before the final segment -- a couple of lessons learned in 2002.

He pretty much accomplished both in one move.

During the second segment, after showing he -- along with Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt Jr. -- had one of the strongest cars in the field, Johnson pitted during a late-segment caution. It was on lap 65, with just five laps to go to determine who would advance to the final round.

By pitting, he gave himself the opportunity to go the rest of the way with a fresh setup -- one reset to the way it was at the start of the race. That's how he avoided getting too loose or too tight.

Also, by falling back after the pit, he was only up to seventh by the time the second segment ended. Fans chose to invert the top 10 finishers from the second segment, meaning Johnson's seventh translated to a fourth-place starting spot.

Within seconds of starting the final 20-lap dash, he was behind teammate and car owner Jeff Gordon, and the two were pulling away from the field.

But Johnson wasn't done employing the tools he had picked up along the way.

First, he had to dig into his new bag of tricks to find a way around the No. 24 Chevy.

"I didn't want to have to bump him, it being my teammate and all," Johnson said.

So he found a way to loosen up Gordon without touching him. Johnson noticed that Gordon's car had been getting increasingly looser as the race wore on. And, he had learned how to use that to his advantage.

"I've learned a lot about traffic and how you can position yourself behind somebody and change the handling on their car," Johnson said. "It's been done to me many times. Jeff was already extremely loose, and once I tucked up behind him it really loosened him up.

"I thought I was going to clear him the first time I got underneath him, but he rallied back on the outside through three and four, and then I was able to put another charge on him and clear him going into three. That way I had all the room off of four to carry my momentum, and then we were able to go from there."

Where he went from there was out to a half-second lead with 10 laps to go. With five laps to go, he was out to a full second lead with Ford driver Kurt Busch charging quickly.

One last time, Johnson thought about the past and how it could help him win.

"Once I got in the lead, I've lost races before in the ASA Series by just dominating and taking off, and then abusing my stuff," he said. "I wanted to find a distance where I could manage and hold on to a distance where nobody could get to me and turn me around coming to the checkered flag."

That's what he found, and a little after 11 p.m. the fireworks started popping and Johnson was an all-star champion. Though Wheeler was nowhere to be found -- surely he was shaking hands and slapping backs with friends and guests, reveling in yet another correct prediction -- Gordon and Knaus would toast him later in the night and team owner Rick Hendrick would praise him.

"Jimmie's been extremely smart," Hendrick said. "I think everyone was amazed, myself included, last year with what he was able to do. This year he's just added on to the experience from last year. I've always been amazed at him to be able to talk around the track when the car is actually sideways coming off of (a turn), saying, 'We might do something to the right front shock, or we might do this or that.'

"I've heard drivers where you can't see the car wiggle and they're screaming. You see Jimmie out there with it absolutely sideways at these speeds just having a casual conversation with Chad. I've never seen anyone with less experience do the job that he's done and handle the pressure he's handled. They were even in the van coming over here to the Media Center talking about how to make the '600' car better with shocks and springs. These guys right here are an awesome combination.

"You mentioned it a moment ago, it's all about chemistry, and these two right here are two of the best I've ever had."

Saturday night, they proved to be all-stars; two of the best in business.

Rupen Fofaria covers NASCAR for The Raleigh News & Observer and is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at rups@theraces.com.