Johnson tries to get Keselowski's head racing

• Keselowski, the points leader, seeks his first Sprint Cup title
• Five-time Cup champion Johnson known for planting seeds of doubt in opponents' heads
• Johnson trails Keselowski by 20 points heading into Sunday finale

HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- The two contenders for the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship approached the dais for a joint interview at Homestead-Miami Speedway in contrasting styles Thursday.

Jimmie Johnson made a beeline for his seat.

Brad Keselowski haltingly ambled toward the stage while casting furtive glances around the room.

Heavyweight and five-time champion Johnson, who makes a game of planting seeds of doubt in an opponent's head, vs. Cup tween Keselowski, whose biggest claim to fame on the circuit, aside from nine career wins, is social media swagger.

Was the points leader already feeling rattled by being on the cusp of his first title in NASCAR's premier series? Keselowski asserted many times that he wasn't. But Johnson says his rival will.

"At some point, the magnitude of it hits you," said the Hendrick Motorsports driver, who won five consecutive championships from 2006-10. "He may be very comfortable and calm now. It may not happen until he's in the car. But at some point, that magnitude hits, and I've lived through it five times. That's a turning moment, and we'll see how he responds."

Keselowski's response Thursday was direct.

"There's pressure applied and pressure felt," he said. "Certainly, (Johnson's) trying to apply pressure. Certainly, I don't feel any."

You could almost hear the bell signaling Round 1.

Keselowski might not be as battle-tested as Johnson, but he still is the presumptive favorite entering Sunday's Ford EcoBoost 400.

Trailing by 20 points, Johnson must win on a 1.5-mile superspeedway that he has yet to conquer while hoping for a collapse by Keselowski, who has averaged a finish of 5.1 during the first nine Chase races.

But the season finale will be unlike any yet experienced by the Penske Racing driver, who is in only his third full season in Cup and hasn't faced such a pressure-packed situation.

"I don't think Brad knows yet this is a different race," said Rusty Wallace, an analyst for ESPN who won the 1989 championship. "If you're going to get nervous, this is the one. I'm not sure Brad knows 100% about that yet."

Johnson made sure Keselowski was cognizant of it during a news conference in which he incessantly needled him with subtle jabs:

Though Keselowski, who has finished lower than 11th only once in the past 19 races, needs only a 15th or better to clinch the first Cup title for team owner Roger Penske, Johnson insisted it wasn't "a layup."

Unprompted, Johnson mentioned that he had drawn inspiration from Ryan Hunter-Reay's stunning comeback to win the IndyCar championship two months ago when Will Power squandered a lead with a spin. Power happens to be Keselowski's teammate.

Johnson also reminded him that the points leader entering the finale has lost the championship the past two years.

"Brad, if you'd like me to call later and remind you of any other examples, I certainly can," he said with a laugh.

In 2010, Johnson entered the season finale trailing Denny Hamlin but badgered the points leader about blowing a victory a week earlier at Phoenix International Raceway. It seemed to throw Hamlin off his game throughout the weekend, and the Joe Gibbs Racing driver qualified 37th, spun early in the race and finished 14th to hand over the crown.

Though he is coy about it ("I didn't come in here with a huge agenda thinking that I was going to make a difference," he claimed Thursday), the mind games likely won't cease until the checkered flag falls.

"This is just the start of it," Johnson said. "Every camera in Florida will be on us in every practice session, on the walk to and from the transporter. All of that just ramps up. It's tough, and you have to do things that make you feel uncomfortable."

Keselowski, 28, said he relishes it.

"I want the pressure," he said. "I thrive in it."

A tireless work ethic

He seemed unaffected Thursday as he joked his way through a full day of media obligations.

"A lot of stressed out people in here," he said, entering a room of reporters late in the afternoon. "You guys OK with the pressure?"

Someone suggested he should join them for drinks on Miami Beach.

"I'm not going to be there," he said, jokingly pointing to his eyes while exaggerating, "I've got to focus."

Humor is the most outward method that Keselowski has employed to deflect nerves throughout the Chase. On the pace laps before the second Chase race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, he asked his crew if they'd seen the Saturday Night Live skit on undecided voters the previous night. "Hilarious," he said.

The off-beat approach belies a steely mental toughness that Keselowski honed through his hardscrabble roots of being raised in a Midwestern racing family of modest means, a tireless work ethic and a do-it-yourself philosophy.

"I respect that in him," Wallace said. "He built his own cars, painted his own cars, built his own engines. He towed the car to the track. His family did everything together."

It branded the Rochester Hills, Mich., native with a self-determination that has served him well while breaking into Cup. Keselowski, who chose Tom Petty's I Won't Back Down for his introductory song at Bristol Motor Speedway, battled early in his career with Denny Hamlin, Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch without yielding. He exhibited the same measured defiance at last week's race at Phoenix , where he went on a postrace tirade against veterans who had criticized his aggression.

"Brad has been waiting on this opportunity all his life so I don't expect him to crack under the pressure," Dale Earnhardt Jr. said recently. "I think he will be tough."

Keselowski likes noting he has stood firm in the face of withering expectations before. In his first shot at a first-class ride in NASCAR — as a one-race substitute for a Camping World Truck Series team — Keselowski qualified on the pole position and led 62 laps.

That earned him a shot a month later with Earnhardt's JR Motorsports Nationwide Series team. In his first race, NASCAR's most popular driver warned Keselowski he'd lose the ride if he wrecked, but he also expected him to excel against a field of NASCAR stars.

Keselowski finished 14th in his debut at Chicagoland Speedway, besting Bobby Labonte, Edwards, Juan Pablo Montoya and Jamie McMurray.

"I had no idea what to expect," he said. "It was like, 'Wow, now that was pressure.'

"Moments like that make this not seem so bad, and they also build up a level of confidence that I feel like this is quite a bit easier than those moments."

Handling the pressure

Johnson, though, made the case that the pressure transcends the driver.

"The 'A-ha' moment comes for everybody in that championship battle," he said. "Every guy that goes over the wall for pit stops will have that moment. Every guy turning a screw, nut or bolt and putting fuel in the car. Regardless of any needling I can do, those moments are going to show up. If I can plant that seed and help spur that along, then cool."

As he listened to Keselowski take presumptive questions about what his championship might mean for his family and as a morale boost for Detroit in the wake of the Tigers' World Series loss, Johnson smiled.

Pondering what he calls "questions I wasn't ready for," were among the most unsettling parts of Johnson's championship reign.

"It makes you think about things you don't want to talk about," he said.

Sitting beside Keselowski, Johnson declined to explain how he'd handled that weight ("it would probably be kind of stupid"), but he seemed relieved he wouldn't be facing it this weekend.

"I'm at peace," Johnson said. "I don't want to be in this situation, but I'm strangely optimistic. I can't explain why. I'll see if this feeling comes true Sunday evening."