It's not official, but it's true: Johnson headed for three-peat

Jimmie Johnson can start finding a place on his mantel for his third consecutive Sprint Cup championship trophy.

After his dominating performance Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, in which he led 339 laps on his way to his fourth win in his last five outings at the tiny Virginia short track, Johnson is well on his way to another title.

'It's getting closer,' Jimmie Johnson says of a possible three-peat. (AP)

Even Johnson, who stretched his lead to 149 points over Greg Biffle with only four races left, is starting to admit the championship is within sight.

"It's getting closer," he said. "It's still not time."

Johnson might not think the time is here just yet, but the hands on the clock are very close to striking midnight for the rest of the Chase field.

"Today was a big step in the right direction," said Johnson. "As long as I can stay scared and on my heels and worried about losing this thing, the better this team's going to be."

Johnson might be warming up to the idea that he's on the path to another title, but don't expect him to change his approach over the next four races even though he now has the biggest lead in the history of the Chase after six races.

"No, I think we really need to go out and do the same stuff," Johnson said. "We still can lose this points lead and we have to think that way and we have to keep our eye on the ball and make sure we're swinging hard at it each time. That's what this race team is good at, and that's what I'm very proud of. ... It's been a great run and I'm looking forward to some more victories."

But while the odds have swung far in Johnson's favor, others still at least mathematically in the title hunt won't sign off on engraving the championship trophy just yet.

"I'm still confident we can catch him, for sure," said Biffle, who did all he could just to manage a 12th-place finish Sunday. "We're gonna come and get them. We've got four more chances and we're going to some of our best places, so they better be on their A game. I know they have been so far, but we're gonna bring the heat to Atlanta and all the rest of the places and see what we can do."

Carl Edwards, who was able to notch a much-needed third Sunday after back-to-back poor finishes, wasn't able to move up from the fourth spot in the standings but is also not ready to concede anything.

"No way," Edwards said. "He could have any sort of trouble at the next two races and be right back there with us with all these guys that are kind of bunched together. It looked like all of us were within 40-50 points second through fourth, maybe, so it could happen to anyone. "

"We saw what happened with Kyle (Busch) and his team. Those guys seemed unbeatable, but they just had the bad luck -- like what happened to us last week. We still don't know exactly what happened -- just some sort of gremlin in the electrical system, so, no, this isn't over until the last lap at Homestead, that's for sure."

Jeff Burton's gremlins were on pit road Sunday. Burton overshot his pit stall on a crucial last scheduled stop, resulting in a one-lap penalty that doomed the Richard Childress driver to a 17th place finish.

And just like that, Burton went from only 69 behind Johnson to 152.

"It was just bad timing, really," Burton said. "Just one of those things that happens on pit road."

But like Biffle and Edwards, Burton is chalking up Sunday to Johnson's long mastery of Martinsville and believes there is still a lot of racing left before deciding the championship.

"No, I don't think this is the nail at all," Burton said. "I fully expected to come here and the No. 48 to run well. If it surprises anybody that the No. 48 ran well at Martinsville, they are crazy. It doesn't surprise me one bit. This I think is their strongest race track of every place we run. They run better here than anyone and they run well at a lot of places. I don't view this as being over."

Burton may be one of the few left to hold that opinion.