Nothing could stop Jimmie Johnson’s drive into the NASCAR record books. Not even a final, furious push by Carl Edwards.

Edwards led a race-high 157 laps to win Sunday’s season-ending race at Homestead-Miami Speedway. But his series-high ninth win of the year wasn’t enough to wrest away the Sprint Cup title.

Johnson locked up his third consecutive championship with a solid 15th-place run, beating Edwards by 69 points to join Cale Yarborough as the only drivers in NASCAR history to win three straight titles. Yarborough did it 30 years ago, under a different scoring system and in a very different NASCAR.