By Jimmie Johnson
Well we did it.

That was a pretty cool day wasn't it? I still have a hard time believing it all. I guess in the next couple of days it will sink in and I'm sure when it finally does it will be one of the greatest feelings in the world.

One of the things I am most proud of is how this Lowe's team never gave up even when things were looking pretty bleak. We were 256 points behind the leader and nobody conceded anything. I think we knew in our hearts we could do this. We just had some bad luck in the beginning. We knew this team was capable of winning a championship. We just needed some luck. Some guys had some back luck and that allowed us to get back into it too.

Jeff Burton, Matt Kenseth and a lot of the guys in the Chase taught me a lot this year. I have a ton of respect for all those guys. Tony Stewart was a big help to me at Phoenix and Homestead. And my teammates Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch, Casey Mears, and Brian Vickers were also a lot of help.

What is the secret to our success this season? I don't think it is overly complicated. I think we all just matured as a race team. I have to give a lot of credit to Chad Knaus. At the beginning of the season when he was suspended for those four races; we had a plan in place how we were going to do things different and that sped things up. He did a phenomenal job putting this deal together. This has been his baby since day one.

I knew we had a good team. I knew we'd be able to do things right. But you just can't control the outside variables. On Sunday I was around three or four wrecks and had a piece of debris go through the front of the race car, which we had to fix on pit road. There was just a lot of crazy stuff going on and luckily we missed all those problems.

Now our plan is to celebrate, do some media work this week here in New York City and enjoy Thanksgiving. We have lots of things to be thankful at our house this year and I hope yours is the same. After Thanksgiving we plan to go back to New York City for the entire week at the banquet. That should be busy and a blast.

After all the championship work, some vacation time and a few trips it will be time for testing in Daytona. Then we start work on repeating this championship. But for now I plan on enjoying every minute of this title.