ESPN Sprint Cup

As Charles Dickens might say, the start of Jimmie Johnson's 2006 season was the best of times and the worst of times.

Johnson won the Daytona 500, but he did it while crew chief Chad Knaus was banished and forced to watch the race at home.

In the eyes of some, it was a tainted victory for a team that has been caught cheating one week earlier. But for the men who work on the No. 48 Chevrolet, it was a huge momentum boost, showing them what they could do under adverse conditions.

It also was a game-changer for Johnson, a situation that helped propel the team to the championship that had eluded it for four seasons.

"We found a road map to the championship," Johnson said. "It took experiencing some tough times and learning some patience."

Experience, patience and overcoming adversity. Those are three things Johnson didn't have when he finished second in 2003 (the last year of the full-season points format) and second in 2004 (the first year of the Chase playoff).

Johnson went into the final race of 2005 in a familiar spot. He was second once again, 52 points behind Tony Stewart. But Johnson cut a tire, scraped the wall and finished 40th. Another disappointing ending.

"We knew how to win races, but we didn't know how to win a championship," Knaus said. "We had to learn how to do that."

First, Johnson and Knaus had to decide whether they could do it together. Neither man was sure he wanted to try any longer. Team owner Rick Hendrick helped persuade them to stick it out for another year.

"The pressure was getting to both of them," Hendrick said in 2006. "There wasn't any sense in starting the year [together] if they were not committed to making it work. They had to decide themselves. They went through some pretty tough times."

More tough times were coming at the start of 2006. NASCAR inspectors caught Knaus red-handed. He found a way to alter the height of the rear window to give the car an aerodynamic advantage in qualifying at Daytona.

Knaus was sent home, but the 48 team never missed a beat. Darian Grubb stepped in as crew chief, and Knaus watched his team win the biggest race in NASCAR. Knaus was happy for the team, but saddened to be outside looking in.

"It crushed him," Johnson said later. "And that doesn't describe how much it hurt him. It devastated him to not be there, but Chad came back determined to make up for it."

Johnson then finished second one week later and won at Las Vegas in the third race of the season. The 48 crew came together and sent a message that it was the team to beat.

Two months later, Johnson proved he could win a restrictor-plate race without the controversial winning car at Daytona. That car was on display at Daytona International Speedway (the standard procedure for all Daytona 500 winners) when Johnson won at Talladega in April.

Johnson never had won at a restrictor-plate track before the 2006 season. He also had been blamed for racing recklessly in plate events. So his victories at Daytona and Talladega were another indication that he had taken a step forward in his quest for a championship.

Beginning with the Talladega victory, Johnson would rank No. 1 in the points for 16 consecutive races, still the longest stretch of his career at the top of the rankings. He also earned his first victory at Indianapolis, winning the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.

But he closed out the regular season with two consecutive finishes outside the top 10, forcing Johnson to start the Chase No. 2 behind Matt Kenseth.

Things got much worse in the Chase opener at New Hampshire, when a 39th-place finish dropped Johnson to ninth in the standings, the first time all season he had fallen below the top three spots.

Suddenly, Johnson was 139 points behind with nine races remaining. This was when the 48 team took advantage of what it had learned early in the season.

Having won twice while Knaus was suspended, Johnson and the crew knew they could overcome a difficult situation. One bad race to start the Chase didn't bring on a panic. Everyone on the team still believed the 48 could win the title.

And things would get worse before they got better. With five races to go, Johnson was 146 points back in seventh place. It appeared he was going to fall a little short of the championship for the fifth consecutive season.

But the second trip to Martinsville was when Johnson began his surge back up the standings. He won on the Virginia short track, but it was the misfortune of points leader Jeff Burton that enabled Johnson to make up 105 points in the race.

Burton finished 42nd, and Johnson left Martinsville third in the standings with four races left. It was the only break Johnson needed.

He finished second at Atlanta, then took the points lead with another runner-up finish at Texas. He was 17 points ahead of Kenseth heading to Phoenix, and Johnson's third consecutive runner-up showing gave him a 63-point lead entering the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Johnson knew he needed only to stay close to Kenseth to win the title, which he did by finishing ninth, three spots below Kenseth.

A team that pulled together through adversity in the first race of the season also made the biggest comeback in the three-year history of the Chase. Johnson learned patience, and Knaus learned he didn't have to do it all himself.

"I was micromanaging in the past," Knaus said after winning the title. "By the end of 2005, I was whipped. I had to allow my guys to do things without me going back and double-checking everybody. I had to trust them."

He did, and they came through when times were tough.

Johnson and Knaus gained an enormous amount of confidence in 2006, something that would help them beat their teammate in 2007.

Jeff Gordon led the standings most of the season. Gordon had a 68-point lead over Johnson with five races to go, but Johnson had made up a far bigger deficit one year earlier.

That confidence was clear when Johnson won the next four races to take an 86-point lead over Gordon into the final event. Johnson finished seventh and clinched his second consecutive Cup title.

It took Johnson, Knaus and the 48 team four seasons to learn how to win a championship. The question now is, has anyone else in Cup learned enough to stop them from winning another one?

Terry Blount covers motorsports for ESPN.com. He can be reached at terry@blountspeak.com.