CONCORD, N.C. – Jimmie Johnson used a calculated strategy Saturday night to win NASCAR’s All-Star race and its $1 million prize for the third time in his career.

The five-time series champion won the first 20-lap segment, then rode at the back of the field for the next 60 laps around Charlotte Motor Speedway. His plan was to stay out of trouble, and make his play for the win in the fifth and final segment.

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Oriol Servia crashes into a wall at the entrance to the pit area during the first day of qualifying for the Indianapolis 500. Servia will try again today to grab one of the nine remaining spots in the 33-car field for next Sunday’s race. The Associated Press

The new format this year set it up so that the winners of the first four segments would be the first four drivers down pit road for a mandatory stop before the 10-lap sprint to the finish. Johnson’s win in the first segment meant he was guaranteed to be the first driver down pit road, and he had the first stall — the reward for his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team winning Thursday night’s Pit Crew Competition.

The race was then just to beat everyone else off pit road, and Johnson did by edging Matt Kenseth across the line.

He then had a great restart, and pulled away to become just the third driver — joining Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon — to win three All-Star races. Johnson’s other wins were in 2003 and 2006.

This win comes a week after his Darlington Raceway victory gave Hendrick Motorsports its 200th Cup win, and he celebrated by picking up team owner Rick Hendrick, who climbed halfway through the window of the Chevrolet for Johnson’s celebratory lap.

“He said come pick me up, and once I got to him, he didn’t want the ride,” Johnson said. “I’m like, ‘No, no, I came to get you, Get on the car.’ It was great to take him around.”

Brad Keselowski, winner of the third segment, had no chance to catch Johnson over the closing 10 laps.

“It’s all about the restart,” Keselowski said. “The high line on the restart just wouldn’t go. I don’t know if I would have been able to do anything, but I would have liked another shot. We got beat by a five-time champ and (three-time) All-Star winner, so I think we’re doing pretty good. We didn’t have enough to pull it off.”

Kenseth, winner of the second segment, finished third and was followed by Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr., who won the fourth segment. Earnhardt advanced into the All-Star race by winning the qualifying race earlier Saturday night.

INDYCAR: Roger Penske’s strategy beat Michael Andretti’s team by inches — 9.168 inches to be exact.

In the closest pole duel in Indianapolis 500 history, Team Penske sent points leader Will Power onto the track with two minutes left in the Pole Day shootout — a shrewd move that prevented three Andretti drivers from taking one last shot at the pole and preserving the No. 1 starting spot for Ryan Briscoe

It was a remarkable finish on a wild afternoon.

Briscoe was the surprise winner with a four-lap average of 226.484 mph. He completed the 10-mile qualification run 0.0023 seconds quicker than James Hinchcliffe. The previous record was set in 1970 when Al Unser edged Johnny Rutherford by 0.01 seconds over the four-lap qualifying run.

“My name will go down forever for something that I won here at the Indy 500,” Briscoe said after claiming his first Indy pole. He narrowly missed the pole in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

How close was the battle on Indy’s historic 2.5-mile oval?

A series spokesman blurted out the actual distance, right down to the thousandth of an inch.

Nobody knows how to play this game better than Penske, and he proved it again.

The iconic racing owner has won five of the last seven poles at Indy and extended his Indy record to 17 poles. Briscoe is the 11th driver to win a pole for Penske, and it comes one week before Penske celebrates the 40th anniversary of his first career Indy win in 1972. He’ll get a shot at win No. 12 next Sunday.

Penske’s three drivers — Briscoe, three-time Indy winner Helio Castroneves and Power, the points leader — spent most of this week just trying to crack the top 10 of the speed charts.

Some around Gasoline Alley thought the only IndyCar team to win a pole or a race this season was sandbagging.

Maybe it was. When Castroneves arrived at the track Saturday morning, it didn’t take him long to top 227 mph in the early morning practice, and once qualifying began, it quickly became apparent this would be a two-team race between Penske’s drivers and the resurgent Andretti team.

NATIONWIDE: With most of the NASCAR world focused solely on Charlotte and Saturday night’s All-Star Race, the Nationwide Series has Iowa Speedway all to itself.

As if Ricky Stenhouse Jr. needed any more of an edge.

Stenhouse won both Nationwide races at Iowa’s .875-mile oval in 2011, beating Brad Keselowski and Carl Edwards in May and getting shoved across the line by Edwards in August after blowing his engine just yards from the checkered flag.

Neither Edwards nor Keselowski are running in today’s race. In fact, the only Cup regular in the field will be Kurt Busch, leaving Stenhouse as the clear favorite at a track where he picked up his first and second career wins.

Stenhouse, the defending series champion and current points leader, will start third in today’s race. Elliott Sadler will start from the pole just a week after his heartbreaking finish at Darlington Speedway, followed by Sam Hornish Jr.

Danica Patrick will start ninth.

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