Jimmie Johnson is hoping the No. 48 will hit the track at Homestead with plenty of thunder down under the hood. (Photo: Getty Images)
HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Somehow, Jimmie Johnson managed to narrow Denny Hamlin’s Sprint Cup point lead to 15 points entering the Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Johnson is thus on the cusp of a fifth straight championship, which doesn’t seem as significant because no one else has even won four straight. Johnson is merely attempting to extend a record he already possesses.
To win that unprecedented fifth, though, Johnson said he could use some more speed. Even though events turned against him at Phoenix, Hamlin’s Toyota has outperformed Johnson’s Chevy in recent races.
“We're doing everything we can,” said Johnson. “We're trying as hard as we can. We're … making sure we have the best engines, go through … (everything to) make sure our car is as fast as it can be, and then race.
“I wish we had more speed. … Last couple weeks we've been good and they've (Hamlin) been great. We need to get that turned around and be great. … First goal is to have enough speed to run away from them, not worry about it. If not, you have to back up, and punt, and figure out what to do from there.”
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REMAIN CALM--The continuing decline in attendance and television ratings was initially greeted with bewilderment in many quarters of NASCAR. Stage two was denial. Stage three is that everything will be fine.
“I don't think Rome is burning in NASCAR,” said Richard Childress, who put three of his Chevys in the Chase. “I think we still have a great sport. We have great fans. I think the economy has touched every sport at some point. I think that we will come back and be as strong as we ever were.
“I don't know financially-wise, but I think with the fans, they're going to get their NASCAR fix, and I just think it'll be back.”
The most successful owner, Rick Hendrick, said the racing “is the best I’ve ever seen.”
PRESSURE? NOT A PROBLEM--Three contenders remain, but Kevin Harvick has to get some help in the form of missteps by the two, Hamlin and Johnson, in front of him.
Harvick’s crew chief, Gil Martin, praised the driver for his ability to cope with pressure.
“He (Harvick) works his best under these kinds of conditions I think that we're going to be under,” said Martin. “Head games will not bother him because he's one of the best that there is at playing head games to start with. I'm very, very happy that we have a driver with that strong of a mental aspect about him going into this race.
“I wouldn't swap him for anybody right now.”
JUST A LITTLE LESS-- All three contenders have to go into the race determined to win not just the championship but the actual race.
Only Hamlin has some small control of his own destiny. Only Hamlin, technically speaking, doesn’t have to win. If Johnson wins the race – he has never won in Homestead, by the way –Hamlin still wins the championship as long as he finishes second, leads at least a lap and neither leads the most laps. In that scenario, the two would finish with the same number of points, but Hamlin would claim the title by virtue of winning one more race than Johnson.
THE MONKEY WRENCH--It also benefits Hamlin slightly if NONE of the three contenders manages to win. Hamlin won it last year, but Ford drivers had won five straight before that.
The Roush Fenway team, flagship of the Ford fleet, has been improving rapidly on intermediate tracks, thanks in part to a new engine design. All three of its Chase drivers – Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth – have won the season finale over the past five years.
For whatever reason, Homestead-Miami has been “a Ford track.”
Great idea #4: Sprint Cup racin' on dirt tracks.
Dear NASCAR This Week,
I read your newspaper offerings weekly, and enjoy them, especially the comments from NASCAR fans. I've been a race fan for 65-plus years and enjoy sprints on dirt and NASCAR. Was talking to some buddies recently about what NASCAR could do to get fans “returning to the track,” and we came up with some suggestions:
Thanks. -- Gary H., Newburgh, Ind.
Monte replies: Thanks to you and your friends for putting so much thought into this. We’d love to see Cup races on dirt, too, but there aren’t any dirt tracks capable of accommodating 50,000 or more fans.
Kurt Busch won the 2004 Chase with Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon literally on his tail.
The first Chase (for the then Nextel Cup) was as dramatic as this one figures to be. In the final race, then as now in Homestead, Fla., Jimmie Johnson finished second and Jeff Gordon third, but Kurt Busch, then in a Ford was able to manage a fifth-place finish to win the championship over Chevy drivers Johnson (minus eight points) and Gordon (-16). Who won the race? Ford driver Greg Biffle.
photos: Getty Images
Ford, crew chief if point leader Denny Hamlin, and Knaus, leading the team of reigning champ Jimmie Johnson, have developed a rivalry as fierce as their drivers. After Hamlin’s Texas victory, Ford suggested Johnson’s crew had essentially choked under pressure. It was Knaus’ strategy that prevailed at Phoenix, though, as he managed to bring his driver home fifth without having to make a late pit stop. Hamlin had to make such a stop, for fuel, and Hamlin finished 12th. The difference between Hamlin and Johnson is a mere 15 points with one race remaining.
My take: Johnson could have suggested it was Ford who blinked this time with the championship on the line. But he didn’t. The final verdict comes at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
It’s a simple case of the Cinderella story versus the truth of who has the best damn car on the track.
AVONDALE, Ariz. – This Chase race is a bouncing ball. Each week. Back and forth.
Intangibles run rampant. Let’s see.
On Friday, Denny Hamlin was in breakout mode. His crew chief, Mike Ford, has supposedly gotten under the skin of Jimmie Johnson’s crew, which, by the way, wasn’t the same as it had been a week earlier.
On Monday, Johnson still trailed by 15 points, but it seemed as if it was time to get the cases of champagne ordered. Hamlin had played it a bit too safe by pitting near the end of the Kobalt Tools 500, apparently not realizing that most everyone else was going to try to conserve fuel and make it to the end, and more importantly, that most were going to succeed.
At Phoenix International Raceway, Hamlin snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, leaving him to wander aimlessly out of the track’s media center, muttering that he didn’t think he had done anything wrong.
Meanwhile, there was Kevin Harvick lurking, eyeing the two in front of him with the stare of a vulture waiting to snatch up the pieces.
But what if we stopped putting so much weight into the tangibles? What if the tangibles are really going to decide who wins this heated contest?
What if what happens just … happens?
If Johnson emerges next week as the champion, the prevailing view is going to be that Hamlin’s crew chief, Ford, spat on Superman’s (Johnson crew chief Chad Knaus) cape and got what was coming to him. If Hamlin wins it all, it’s going be because he kept a level head and didn’t let anyone get to him.
If Harvick wins, well, it’s going to require some alleged choking or bad luck by not one, but two. Thus will emerge the Cinderella story.
But maybe, just maybe, this championship is to be decided simply by which driver has the fastest car. Maybe no one’s going to choke. Maybe the attention should be justly slanted toward a tale of winning, not losing.
If so, few will notice. What’s between the ears trumps what’s under the hood.
A day late and a dollar short: Though he failed to make the Chase, Joey logano (has finished in the top 10 in eight straight races, finishing third at Phoenix last weekend. (Photo: Getty Images)
- What goes around comes around. A week after pulling out a win in Texas, Denny Hamlin dominated most of the race at Phoenix, only to see everything go wrong in the late stages.
- The margin from first to second in points, 15 points with one race remaining is the closest in the seven-year history of the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
- Entering the final race in 2004, Kurt Busch led Jimmie Johnson by 18 points.
- Johnson’s style of gamesmanship is subtle. After exerting some pressure with his superior strategy at Phoenix, Johnson said of rival Hamlin, “Nine years being in Cup, I’ve lived in championship pressure, especially the last four years. I know how badly he wants to win a championship. I also know this is going to be a tough week for him, because I’ve been there.”
- “I’m going to be disappointed for the next couple hours,” said Hamlin afterwards, “but trust me. When I get home, I’m done with it. I’m going to try to figure out how to win next week.”
- Is there life outside the Chase? Well, Mark Martin occupies 13th place behind the 12 Chase drivers, and he holds a 24-point edge over Jamie McMurray in the “best in class” competition.
- Brendan Gaughan made his first Cup start of the year and crashed on the second lap. In other words, his Cup season consists of one lap.
- Carl Edwards won nine races in 2008 but 70 races passed before he finally earned career victory No. 17.
- Note Joey Logano’s last five finishes: 7, 6, 5, 4, 3. He’s finished in the top 10 in eight straight races.
- On the one hand, the Sprint Cup Series enters its final race with a three-way scramble at the top. The championships have already been wrapped up in both the Nationwide (Brad Keselowski) and Camping World Truck (Todd Bodine) series.
Jumpin’ “Jack” Edwards discovers Phoenix is a gas, gas, gas. (photo: Getty Images)
AVONDALE, Ariz. – On rare occasions, a man can win a Sprint Cup race by being slower than everyone else, though it’s not a winning strategy for the whole race.
Sunday was just such a day, and Carl Edwards won the Kobalt Tools 500 by gradually going slower than everyone else. Edwards didn’t exactly back into victory lane at Phoenix International Raceway, leading 93 laps after starting on the pole, but the trick over the final 47 laps was slowing down enough to make it to the end.
Down, down, down went Edwards’ lead as his crew chief, Bob Osborne, kept asking him, oddly, “Can’t you go any slower?”
With 12 laps remaining, Edwards’ Ford led Juan Pablo Montoya’s Chevy by 6.9 seconds, and from there the margin sank: 6.1, 5.9, 5.6, 5.4, 5.2, 5.0, 4.6 and 3.6.
The final margin, 4.77 seconds over Ryan Newman, was a consequence of Montoya running out of gas on the final lap.
Requiring a race-car driver to go slow can be as futile as asking speed from a snail.
The experience – Edwards ended a streak of 70 fruitless races, dating back to November 2008 – made the winner sick to his stomach, psychosomatically so.
“You’ve chosen this path,” said Edwards, “and you’re hoping that everything works out, that the race goes the distance (i.e., not beyond, as in green-white-checkered finish), that the amount of fuel I was saving, I was hoping it was the right amount.
“I think (owner) Jack (Roush) put it best when he came over, reached in the window and said, ‘I forgot what it felt like until I got that feeling in my stomach with two laps to go, then I remembered.’ When he said that, my stomach was still hurting just from the nervousness.”
A similar strategy, only one that failed, cost Tony Stewart a victory in New Hampshire on Sept. 19. That was the Chase for the Sprint Cup opener, and Stewart, at least insofar as pursuing a championship was concerned, has seldom been heard from since.
Oh, yeah. The Chase.
The need to conserve NASCAR’s vital natural resources – i.e., fuel – upended all order near the end of the race. Denny Hamlin, who looked like the winner for much of the day, elected to pit near the end and finished 12th as a result. Jimmie Johnson, who never led, coasted across the line in fifth place, cutting Hamlin’s point lead from 33 to 15 points entering the Ford 400 on Nov. 21 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, which, of course, is the final race. Kevin Harvick, who seemed doomed by a pit-crew mistake, also made it to the end without pitting. He finished sixth, shaving the margin between him and Hamlin to 46.
Hamlin, who had been so buoyant after winning at Texas Motor Speedway just a week earlier, left PIR sounding demoralized.
“I couldn’t control it,” he said. “I did everything I was supposed to do. Things didn’t work out for me.
“I hate it boils down to the final race, but that’s what fans love and things like that. I feel like we’ve been the best car over this Chases, and we might not win it.”
Jimmie Johnson – Underdog? What might that do for the popularity of NASCAR?
AVONDALE, Ariz. – Just what does Brian France want to change?
The NASCAR monarch – after all, stock car racing has a clearly defined royal family and order of succession: Bill I, Bill II, Brian I – thinks if times are bad, the only possible solution is change.
The Internet hasn’t changed as much in the last decade as NASCAR.
Why not wait on the fans for once, instead of asking them to adapt?
The Chase, which made finishing 12th as important as first (for 26 races), is in its best shape since 2004, when it debuted. Somehow, by the strangest quirk of fate, one race remains and Jimmie Johnson actually doesn’t have it sewn up.
Johnson, unbeatable and unloved, thinks winning it this year might actually decrease the number of fans who dislike him. He’s going into the final race without the lead. Could the specter of Johnson the … underdog … be raised?
“It would probably be received better than the ones in the past, with the runaway show we’ve had in a couple of them,” he said.
It’s worth a shot, yes?
Lead changes and exciting finishes are up. The flip side, of course, is that Dale Earnhardt Jr. is down.
NASCAR changed its grading system and put everyone on a curve – or maybe all the courses are strictly pass-or-fail – for 26 races. It made all the cars so close to identical that Johnson himself might not be able to tell a Ford from a Chevy without those handy headlight decals. It revved up the action with rules that make the old “racing back to the caution flag” seem safe. The number of laps aren’t even reliable anymore.
Some fans are ticked off. Some are just tired.
Maybe change has been transacted at so dizzying a pace that people just can’t keep up. And contradictions flourish.
With cars that look just alike, inexplicably, one manufacturer, Chevy, dominates as never before.
Exciting races are perceived widely as just the opposite. “Boring” is just a strange word to be used in relation to what has taken place on the tracks this year, but fans say it every day.
Every change is sold as cost-cutting, but none of the teams ever actually save any money because, before they get a chance to do so, more changes emerge from that godforsaken Research and Development Center.
Even change gets old when it never stops.
Kevin Harvick had a loose lugnut on his last pit stop forcing him to pit a second time. The mistake worked in Harvick's favor, however, as he was able to top off his gas allowing him to finish the race without pitting again. (photo : Getty Images)
AVONDALE, Ariz. – An unscheduled pit stop, less than 100 laps from the end of Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 500, hindered Kevin Harvick’s flagging championship hopes, but not much.
Harvick’s Chevy needed two stops because of a lugnut left loose on lap 225. Fortunately, it was a yellow-flag stop and he lost track position, not a lap. But the track position was crucial. With 12 laps to go, Harvick was in 12th place, while the point leader, Denny Hamlin, was second and Jimmie Johnson seventh.
As it turned out, though, Harvick actually picked up ground on point leader Denny Hamlin, narrowing his edge from 59 to 46 points. Hamlin leads the runner-up Jimmie Johnson, by 15.
Johnson finished fifth, Harvick sixth and Hamlin 12th.
“We were just lucky, to be honest,” said Harvick. “If you keep at it, you never know what’s going to happen. … We dodged one, for sure. Still got a chance next week.
GOING, GOING, -- GAUGHAN!-- Brendan Gaughan, making a rare Sprint Cup appearance, crashed at the beginning of the second lap. Provided Gaughan doesn’t respond vigorously with a stirring performance next week at Homestead-Miami Speedway, his entire Cup season will be encapsulated in the one lap he completed Sunday.
SUSPECTS, USUAL-- A hundred laps into the race, Chase drivers rode in eight of the top 10 positions, the only exceptions being Ryan Newman and Martin Truex, neither of whom was in the top five.
GASSSED UP--Shortly after the race’s midpoint, Kasey Kahne’s Toyota was clearly out of compliance with the templates. That’s because he left the pits – and completed two laps – with a gas can stuck upright and clinging with remarkable adhesion to the rear spoiler.
Jeff Burton wrecked at ‘Dega, and he wrecked again at Texas … (photo: Getty Images)
AVONDALE, Ariz. – Have at it, boys. Those words, spoken back in January by NASCAR’s Robin Pemberton, might as well have been the slogan of the season.
Oh, by the way, remember the Maine, the Alamo and Joe Hill, too.
Once, when I was in high school, our team paid a visit to a conference rival we’d beaten 62-0 the year before. That school normally wore orange, but when we trotted out on the field for warm-up, we immediately noticed the other team was wearing red and white T-shirts, matching our school colors. The T-shirts read:
WE REMEMBER! 62-0!
We remembered, too. We won, 34-6, and there weren’t any T-shirts the next year.
While pro football implements rules that limit the capacity of overgrown physical specimens to, uh, play football, NASCAR tumbles into old-fashioned laissez-faire.
If a driver doesn’t like the way another driver is racing him, he can just duke it out, by gosh. Unlike a beanball in baseball, NASCAR doesn’t eject or issue warnings, anything like that.
Have at it, boys. The three R’s are rubbin’, retaliatin’, and wreckin’.
The august ruling body must, of course, prevent an outbreak of anarchy. It can’t have these cocky, rich whippersnappers just rioting in the streets (uh, tracks). They can be scrapping among themselves all they want, but don’t be “sassing” a NASCAR official. Kyle Busch didn’t need words to “sass,” but he would have been no better off had he launched into a profanity-laced diatribe.
One reason modern racers can “have at it” is that they have few limitations.
In the old days, when a driver wrecked a car, he had to fix it, and if he didn’t fix it, he paid to have it fixed. Nowadays that’s the domain of millionaire owners with accompanying millions from sponsors. Now a dozen cars, just like the wrecked one used to be, sit back at the shop. They’ll send a transporter to pick another one up, if need be.
More than 20 years ago, Darrell Waltrip was kidding when he suggested that a car owner’s advice to a driver was, “If you can’t win the race, at least tear up the car.”
That’s no longer a joke. That’s the state of the art now.