Jimmie Johnson returned to familiar ground on Sunday afternoon – Victory Lane at Charlotte Motor Speedway.  He entered the weekend as the track’s all-time leader with seven Cup Series wins.  He exits with his eighth career victory on the mile-and-a-half North Carolina oval, punching his ticket into the next round of the post-season Chase.  As successful as Johnson has been at C-M-S, his last win there before Sunday came more than two years ago.  Johnson got the best of race leader Matt Kenseth on the day’s final restart and drove away to his third win of the season but first since March 20^th at Auto Club Speedway, in the fifth race of the year!  The six-time champion started eleventh and led a race-high 155 laps in notching his seventy-eighth career victory – beating runner-up Kenseth to the checkered flag by a second-and-a-half.  Kasey Kahne finished third, giving Hendrick Motorsports two of the top three spots.  Ryan Newman and Kyle Larson completed the top five … Kevin Harvick started from the pole but led just twelve laps before retiring with engine failure late in the first half of the race.  Harvick wasn’t the only Chase driver finishing near the bottom of the running order in Charlotte.  Denny Hamlin placed thirtieth, also suffering engine failure.  Austin Dillon ran thirty-second, rookie Chase Elliott thirty-third and Joey Logano was thirty-sixth in the forty-car field … Kyle Busch, the Number-1 seed in this year’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, started sixth and finished fourth on Sunday.  He’s third in the post-season standings, nine points behind leader Johnson.