Fort Worth, Texas ? Tony Stewart’s eyes lit up at the thought.

Winning out in the last four races of NASCAR’s Chase for the Nextel Cup championship is a goal he can get his arms around – especially because he isn’t part of the stock-car playoff party.

“It’s a very good goal to shoot for right now, win these last two races and be able to say we’ve won the last four races of the Chase,” said Stewart, who added a second straight victory Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway. “It would be a saving grace to the season.”

Stewart overpowered the field in the Dickies 500, and he made this one look almost too easy: “Smoke” led 278 of 339 laps, including the five extra laps because of a late caution.

Most of the action was well behind him, where Jimmie Johnson quietly grabbed away the point lead from Matt Kenseth by 17 points with a second-place finish. Stewart easily raced away to his fifth win of the season and third in the eight Chase races.

“It was just an unbelievable day. I’ve been racing for 27 years, and I can count on my hands the number of times I’ve had a car like that,” he said.

The race tightened the championship, with Johnson, Kenseth, Dale Earnhardt Jr., rookie Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick separated by just 105 points with two races remaining.

“This was a wild night, but a good one for us, all in all,” said Johnson, who came into the race trailing Kenseth by 26 points. “We’ve had so much fun racing for this since we got down (in the points) early. We just want to keep having fun.”

Johnson has three runner-up finishes and a win in his last four starts.

Harvick was third, followed by Kyle Busch, Clint Bowyer and Earnhardt. Earnhardt somehow overcame a sick stomach, a bounce off the wall, seven pit stops and a penalty for speeding on pit road to move from fourth to third, 78 points behind Johnson.

“Not too bad,” said Earnhardt, who fell all the way from second to 33rd after hitting the wall. “The first part of the race, I didn’t feel good at all. I drank so many fluids, I had heartburn and all kind of bad stuff going on in there. Then, as the race went on, I got to feeling better. I’m just sorry we couldn’t do any better than we did.”

At one point, 2003 champion Kenseth thought he had a tire going down and almost pitted under green. But he stayed out and somehow finished 12th.