2011 Stewart vs. Edwards championship battle

Rating the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: 3.3 Stars

NASCAR journeys into the offseason this year with tons of momentum following one of the best championship runs in the history of the sport. The storylines from this season were as good as any, as were several of the races were. The 2011 Sprint Cup Series season gets a 3.3 Star Rating.

That rating is an average of the ratings from each race this season, excluding the two non-points events and the reader’s choice edition for the Watkins Glen race.

Here is the breakdown of ratings throughout the season:

5 Stars: 8 races

4 Stars: 5 races

3 Stars: 11 races

2 Stars: 10 races

1 Star: 1 race

The 2011 season had more 5 Star races than the past two year’s Monday Morning Crew Chief has rated races, but there were also many more 2 Star races. The good races were really good, while the not-so-great races were worse than normal.

Let’s take a look back at some of the memorable races from this season.

For the first time, the season opened as closed with the best rating possible: 5 Stars. The Daytona 500 started the year off with one of the most incredible races in the history of the sport. Just 20 years old, Trevor Bayne won the race in the Wood Brothers #21 Ford; the first time that organization had been to Victory Lane since 2001. This is a team that no longer shows up to every race, and often it looked like the sport had blown by the Wood Brothers as they struggled to simply remain in the sport. But then, a driver making just the second Cup start of his career, went out and won the first race of his NASCAR career. That wasn’t just his first Cup win; it was his first win in any of NASCAR’s top three divisions.

It’s hard to top one of the greatest Daytona 500 stories ever, but Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards did their best as they fought to the very end of the Ford 400 in the closest championship battle in NASCAR’s 63-year history. There will never be a closer points battle than this year. Stewart and Edwards tied, but Stewart won the title because he won the race, his fifth in the Chase, topping Edwards’ one win early in the year at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Stewart not only won the race and the championship, but he had to come back through the entire field twice and then held off his championship competitor at the end as the top-two drivers in the series this year finished first and second.

Other 5 Star races included Regan Smith’s win in the Southern 500, the Aaron's 499 at Talladega that tied for the closest finish in NASCAR history, as well as a pair of races at NASCAR’s biggest track, Talladega, and its smallest, Martinsville, to finish out October and set the stage for the championship fight.

While there were plenty of terrific races, the season average isn’t all that high because there were more sub-par races than normal. The high number of fuel-mileage races is partially to blame. Those races are often tense as drivers work to conserve fuel, but they usually don’t make for very close finishes and sometimes the winner didn’t have a challenger at the end of the race.

The 2 Star races included the first two Chase races at Chicago and New Hampshire where Stewart won both on fuel-mileage. However, other below-average races came at places such as Dover, Kentucky and Pocono where fuel mileage didn’t come into play.

Those were races, including the two at New Hampshire, where drivers simply couldn’t make much headway on the track. The late summer stretch this year was particularly brutal in some follow-the-leader races. The car designs might be better than when the Car of Tomorrow came out in 2007, but it still needs work. The 2013 car models might help fix some of that, but NASCAR shouldn’t sit back and wait until that change, or next year will again be filled with many 2 Star races.

The lone 1 Star race of the season came in June with the 5-Hour Energy 500 at Pocono Speedway. A morning of rain, and a race filled with debris cautions, mechanical failures and a dominant performance by Jeff Gordon made for one of the longest racedays of the season. The races at Pocono might be only 400 miles next year, but that still wouldn’t have helped this race. It also began a nine-week stretch where only one race received a rating higher than 3 Stars, and that was the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona.

The 2011 season will be remembered as one of the best in many years. All in all, the last two years have been much better than the NEXTEL Cup era and the transition to the new car. This year’s championship run was amazing, but the 2010 battle among Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick was pretty exciting, as well.

Maybe 2012 will be even better. Now that Johnson doesn’t win everything all the time, we could be headed into a stretch where many drivers are regularly in contention for race wins.

Hopefully you enjoyed the ratings throughout the season. Monday Morning Crew Chief will stay active with offseason news and opinion pieces as NASCAR fans struggle through those long three months that make up an offseason that is shorter than other sports, but always feels longer.

Have a wonderful holiday season, everybody.

NASCAR’s championship finish mirrors Major League Baseball playoffs

This must be the year of unbelievable comebacks.

Tony Stewart won the Chase after going winless in NASCAR’s regular season and barely slipped into the final Chase spot based on points before going crazy and winning one of the most exciting championship races ever.

However, Stewart wasn't the only comback champion this fall. He followed the template set by the St. Louis Cardinals when they won the other fall championship on the sports calendar.

The similarities in how the two seasons finished are remarkable. The Cardinals were more than 10 games out of a playoff spot with a month to play, and Stewart said his team didn’t even deserve a spot in the Chase a month before Chase started.

Stewart sat 10th in the points standings just 14 points ahead of 11th when he made that statement after the race in August at Michigan. In fact, Stewart said that Aug. 27, the same day the Cardinals began their climb back into contention.

Both Stewart and the Cardinals squeaked into the playoffs and had to wait until the final day of their respective regular seasons to find out if they would make the playoffs.

They both did and then went on a tear unlike any other their sports had seen from teams so far out of contention with a month to play.

Stewart won five Chase races and the Cardinals beat the teams with the two best records in the National League: the Philadelphia Phillies and Milwaukee Brewers.
The comparisons don’t stop there, however. Stewart and the Cardinals both made the championship game, but neither were content to make those contests any less than thrilling.

Stewart entered the final Sprint Cup Series race of the season at Homestead-Miami Speedway trailing points leader Carl Edwards by three points. The only way Stewart could guarantee himself the championship was if he won the race.

He did win the race, but he had to battle back from adversity throughout the event, and for much of the race it looked like Edwards had the championship in hand as he dominated the first half of the race.

Instead, Stewart took the lead late and Edwards finished second, resulting in a tie for the points lead. Stewart won the championship because he had more wins than Edwards, and Stewart would have lost the championship even if he finished second. There was no margin for error.

The Cardinals also had no margin for error as they entered Game 6 of the World Series facing elimination by the Texas Rangers. The Rangers had the Cardinals down to their final strike twice, but the Cardinals came back both times to win the game on a walk-off homerun by David Freese and win the series the following night.

In both cases, the contest came absolutely down to the wire. It isn’t possible to have a NASCAR points race closer than the tie between Stewart and Edwards, and a baseball team can’t be any closer to being eliminated than the one remaining strike the Cardinals had left.

One would think maybe these types of finishes happen fairly regularly, but NASCAR hadn’t had a championship finish where the top two drivers were separated by less than 10 points since 2004, although the points system changed for this season. Major League Baseball hadn’t had a World Series go to Game 7 since 2002 when the Anaheim Angels beat the San Francisco Giants.

On top of everything else, both championship head coaches won’t return the following year. Cardinals manager Tony La Russa already announced his retirement three days after the World Series ended, and Stewart’s crew chief Darian Grubb confirmed he won’t be atop the #14 team’s pit box in 2012.

This was just one of those amazing years where the championship moment is as thrilling as possible, but it is incredible that those moments in both sports happened in the same year.

Maybe that means we’re in line for a terrific Super Bowl this season, as well.

Rating the Ford 400: 5 Stars *****

The greatest championship battle in the Chase era concluded in one of the most dramatic finishes possible. Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards put on a show worthy of a 5 Star Rating to close out the 2011 season.

For years and years, everybody involved in NASCAR has dreamed of a race to the championship similar to what happened Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway. It happened once in 1992 when Alan Kulwicki barely beat Bill Elliot for the championship, and it happened again 19 years later as Stewart won his third NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship.

Ironically, Kulwicki was also the last owner-driver to win the championship. Sure, Stewart might have a little more help than Kulwicki did, but this is still something that doesn’t come around very often.

Neither do races such as Sunday’s Ford 400. Edwards had a three point lead coming into the race, started on the pole, led the most laps and finished second. That sounds like an incredibly good weekend. Too bad Stewart, the only driver who could take the championship away, was the guy who finished first.

This race had everything, both good and bad. The championship was close, both drivers had great cars and ran extremely hard all day, it rained, several cars had engine problems and the title finally came down to, as everyone loves to say, “the final corner of the last lap at Homestead.”

NASCAR has tried for years to create a system that provides a final race full of tension, and that is surely what it got at Homestead. The Daytona 500 is usually one of the very few races throughout a season where fans have to consciously remember to breathe because the race is both exciting and important. Well, Sunday’s race had that same tension.

Both of the championship contenders also faced tension throughout the race. Edwards had to watch three Ford engines fail, knowing his could be next, and Stewart faced adversity all day starting with gaping hole in the grill after the first run of the race.

Stewart passed a mind-blowing total of 76 cars throughout the race. The #14 took several blows throughout the day, but Stewart managed to drive his way back to the front every single time. Plus, he did it in exciting fashion. At one point after a restart Edwards was on the high side and Stewart dove low to make it four-wide on the frontstretch. That is exciting racing even if the championship isn’t hanging in the balance.

There will always be debate about whether the car or driver matters more. But, with all due respect to both teams that prepared great cars throughout the Chase, it felt like Stewart and Edwards could’ve raced their cars to the front even if they didn’t contain an engine. Both drivers raced as hard Sunday as we will see any two drivers ever race.

To bring a fitting end to a terrific battle, Stewart and Edwards actually tied in the points standings, but Stewart won because he had five wins to Edwards’ one.

Most of the time fans want to see several drivers in contention to win a race, but having this one come down to just Stewart and Edwards was the best possible scenario. The rest of the field seemed to disappear for the final 37 laps, and that made a perfect setting to decide the championship.

So, now we head into the offseason. That is always a bittersweet sentence, but at least this year fans and people inside the sport can hang on to the excitement of the final race of the season.

This was a wonderful ending.

Thanks to all of the Monday Morning Crew Chief readers this season. Hopefully you have enjoyed the journey that is a NASCAR season. Check back for more end-of-season stories in coming days, and the rating for the 2011 Sprint Cup Series season is scheduled to appear Dec. 2 following the championship banquet.

Great championship battle reaches climax

Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart have battled as close as any two drivers can battle during the Chase, and that could make Sunday’s race at Homestead-Miami Speedway a memorable one.



Sure, the final race of the year is always a big one. The champion is crowned, several drivers are in their last race with their current teams and it is the last time we’ll see racing again until February.

But often people tend to forget the final race of the season at least as quickly as other races, if not more so.

The fun of the offseason kicks in quickly as the final drivers find their ride for the next year and any other news that tends to drop out of the NASCAR sky. For example, Hendrick Motorsports switched three of its crew chiefs just two days after Jimmie Johnson won his fifth title in a row.

However, this year’s final race could be one that is remembered right along with the 1992 race at Atlanta where Alan Kulwicki won the championship and the 2004 race at Homestead where Kurt Busch survived a tire falling off to still win the closest Chase battle ever.

Good races with intriguing storylines, no matter where they fall on the schedule, have a longer life in a race fan’s mind than another bland championship coronation in the Nationwide Series this year and the not-so-close finishes in five of the first seven years of the Chase.

Yes, other drivers have been mathematically in contention at Homestead, but Stewart had a 52-point lead heading into the last race of his 2005 championship season, and Johnson had a lead of at least 63 points in his first four championship seasons.

Even last year’s race felt like a formality before Johnson raised the trophy after Denny Hamlin wrecked early in the race and effectively ended any chance he had of maintaining the 15-point lead he had entering the race.

But not this year. Edwards and Stewart have both been the two best drivers the last two weeks, and they have been able to put on a show where for once it is OK to forget about the rest of the field. The way these two guys are running, it would probably be an entertaining race if they were the only two cars on the track.



Hopefully the championship contenders qualify close to each other and run up at the front of the field for the balance of the race. This has the chance to be one of the most intense battles the sport has seen in years.

But, that doesn’t mean there will be fender-rubbing and fights after the race. Fans would probably get a kick out of that type of situation, but this race will more likely be a clean, close race that will keep fans chewing on their fingernails until the final laps.

These are two aggressive drivers, and they have as much incentive as any to give everything they have to win Sunday’s race. That’s not to say they haven’t been giving their all. Their battle two-thirds of the way through the race at Phoenix was fantastic.

If they race like that again this week, maybe everyone will remember the final race of the season.

Johnson officially eliminated, but recent performances should be his main concern

It’s done. It’s over. For the first time in the history of Monday Morning Crew Chief, Jimmie Johnson will not be the Sprint Cup Series champion.



Johnson currently sits fifth in the points standings, 68 points out of the lead and mathematically eliminated from a chance at the championship.

Johnson’s run of championships was bound to end at some point, but it still feels weird not to at least have him in contention at Homestead. He at least had a mathematical shot to win the two Chases before his run of five championships began in 2006. That means he could be a seven-time champion if things had gone right at Homestead in 2004 and 2005.

Wow. Johnson has been simply amazing since he entered the Sprint Cup Series full time in 2002. He has always finished with at least three wins and has finished no worse than fifth in the points standings. Both of those streaks are also in jeopardy heading into Homestead.

Many people have already started to reminisce about how great it was that Johnson made history with five straight titles. What happened to all of the hatred directed at that team when it won all of the time? This happens with every really successful driver at some point. Once he stops winning, all of a sudden people want to relive the past and see him win again. We’re never satisfied.

In any case, Johnson’s performance in this year’s Chase has been surprisingly sub-par. Sure, fuel mileage got him at Chicago and wrecks hurt his finishes at New Hampshire and Charlotte, but the #48 car has run in the middle of the pack after Johnson came to within shouting distance of the lead after a second-place finish at Martinsville.

Since then Johnson has finished 14th at Texas and Phoenix. Usually, Johnson sees an opportunity and smashes the rest of the field and grab tight to the points lead he goes through a stretch of races such as the one at Kansas. He won that race in dominating fashion, leading 197 of the 272 laps.

Instead, Johnson has been mediocre for the balance of the Chase. The race at Phoenix is particularly troubling. Hendrick Motorsports is typically very good at adjusting to changes in the sport, and Johnson has been dominant at Phoenix in the past, but he ran much of the race in the mid-20s and never made a charge toward the front. Even when he took two tires and jumped up to ninth after a caution, he eventually fell back into the 20s.

But, Johnson still sits fifth in the points standings heading into the final race of the season. There are a lot of drivers would dream of a season where they could finish fifth in the points. The problem is Johnson expects to be better than fifth in the points.

Regardless, it feels like Johnson is doing terribly right now because he has become a mid-pack car in the last two races. The concern should be on his performance during the race rather than his finishes. It won’t truly matter where Johnson is in the points again for another 52 weeks, but how he performs in many of the races during that span does matter.

The #48 team might find this to be its most difficult offseason yet because for one of the few times in Johnson’s career his car didn’t drive well enough to even compete near the front of the field.

No matter what the final stats say, that #48 car has to start running better throughout a race before that team can even think about competing for another championship.

NASCAR re-blurs line for aggressive-driving penalties

Just one week after NASCAR figuratively drew a line in the sand when it punished Kyle Busch, it quickly went back and erased that line when it let Brian Vickers walk free after Sunday’s race at Phoenix International Raceway.

Vickers pushed Matt Kenseth into the Turn 3 wall on lap 178, taking Kenseth out of the race after he took Kenseth out of the championship battle two weeks prior at Martinsville.

Regardless of previous incidents between these two drivers, Kenseth won the pole, had one of the five best cars in the field Sunday and had a very good chance to win the race.



But, Vickers made sure that didn’t happen, just as Busch ended both Ron Hornaday’s race at Texas and his chance at a championship when he ran Hornaday into the wall under caution during the truck race.

NASCAR brought the hammer down as hard as it ever has on Busch after his incident, but it did absolutely nothing to Vickers at Phoenix. It didn’t even park Vickers for a lap or two.

There is certainly precedent for penalties in that type of situation. Even Carl Edwards had to sit out the rest of the spring race at Atlanta in 2010 after he flipped Brad Keselowski, although Edwards didn’t receive any further penalties beyond probation.

What’s different in this situation? Well, the wreck happened under green-flag conditions. Busch did his damage after the caution came out, but the Edwards’ Keselowski wreck happened under green.

NASCAR has done a better job in recent years of staying out of driver feuds, but it may have missed one here. The wreck sure looked intentional even though Vickers denies it.



Maybe NASCAR shouldn't drop major penalties on Vickers as it did in Busch’s situation but this is twice in the last three weeks, and at least three times this season, counting the race at Sonoma when Vickers put Tony Stewart up on the tire barriers in Turn 11.

Plus, Vickers has raced with this type of aggressiveness for much of his career. Most people remember Vickers first win at Talladega in 2006 when he wrecked Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the last lap, but he also spun Mike Bliss coming to the finish line in the Sprint All-Star Challenge in 2005 to grab that win even though it doesn’t count in the record book.

While Busch might get a lot more publicity about his aggressive driving-style and ill-timed payback, Vickers has had his fair share of overly aggressive moments.

The drivers previous records aren’t that different, and all of the Edwards-Keselowski incidents have happened under green-flag conditions, so where exactly is that “know it when we see it” line that triggers penalties?

NASCAR has done well to put more of the police work in the drivers’ hands, but there has to be some consistency. The sanctioning body is dishing out these penalties like a bad home-plate umpire. An umpire might have an odd strike zone, but as long as it is consistent batters generally keep quiet.

Well, NASCAR has dealt with these three particular situations in three completely different ways. NASCAR has always ruled as a mostly benevolent dictator over the sport where everyone has to play by the rules as NASCAR decides them, but it would do the sport well if NASCAR would rule with more consistency.

That would not only help the credibility of the sport, but it would also prevent backlash from fans and others in the sport when these situations happen.

But, backlash means people are at least talking about the sport. We just spent an entire story devoted to the controversy these rulings create.

Maybe any news really is good news.

Rating the Kobalt Tools 500: 3 Stars ***

Kasey Kahne jumped in and stole the end of the duel in the desert Sunday at Phoenix International Raceway. The race gets a 3 Star Rating overall, but my gosh Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart are putting on a show for the championship.

Edwards and Stewart were certainly the highlight of a race where only four or five guys had a legitimate chance to win, and Kahne was the last one to the party.

Kahne didn’t show up at the front until the second half of the race, but he found himself in front of Edwards by a wide margin after his final pit stop.

Any win is a big win, but Kahne had just two races left to get a win for his Red Bull Racing team, which will fold at the end of the season along with his teammate Brian Vickers’ #83 team.

Kahne said it was fun to win on a new track, as well as break his 81-race losing streak.

“We’ve been right there every weekend, so it feels really good to finally knock one off,” he said. “I’m really excited; it’s been a while. It feels like my first win again it’s been so long.”

Edwards said Kahne’s aggressive driving-style and relationship with crew chief Kenny Francis has helped him succeed in the variety of situations he has dealt with as far as which team he is running for and questions about their stability.

“Those guys are going to be tough for a long time if they can find a groove and if they can stick with one team and have people rally around them,” Edwards said.

Phoenix was the drought-busting track this year. Jeff Gordon also ended a 76-race streak with his win in February.



Besides Edwards and Stewart, A.J. Allmendinger and Matt Kenseth contended early in the race but both fought adversity. Allmendinger had bad pit stops throughout the day and was able to recover to sixth, but Brian Vickers made sure Kenseth’s day ended early when he ran Kenseth straight up into the Turn 3 wall.

That incident will surely bring about comparisons to the Kyle Busch – Ron Hornaday incident a week earlier at Texas, but that is a topic for another day.

The race played out generally as expected despite all of the concerns about the quality of the racing leading up to this weekend. A Bodine brother and Robby Gordon are still wrecking, and it is still incredibly difficult to pass the leader.

Kenseth led the first 36 laps until Stewart made an incredibly gutsy move on the outside to take the lead as he and Kenseth split Geoff Bodine on the frontstretch.

Stewart then put a hurting on the field for the majority of the race. Both Edwards and Kenseth could get close to taking the lead, but neither could get ultimately get around Stewart.

Edwards and Stewart also had a great battle about two-thirds of the way through the race, but Edwards could not get around the #14 car until a late pit stop relegated Stewart to fourth.

The one concern about the quality of racing leading up to the race that came true was the inability to make a pass for the lead. That might be more of a problem with the cars than the track, however. Even though it usually took several laps for a driver to complete a pass farther back in the pack, it was possible.

Overall, the racing groove was plenty wide for hard racing, especially in the first race on a new surface. Stewart actually took the lead after starting in the high lane on several restarts.

As for the larger picture, Edwards and Stewart both had good runs and are still locked in a fantastic championship battle heading into the final race at Homestead. Edwards still leads Stewart by three points. Basically, the driver who finishes better in next week’s race will be the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion.

This is going to be a fun one.



For more photos from the weekend, check out the Monday Morning Crew Chief Facebook page.

Phoenix might not be much of a wild card race

Phoenix International Raceway ripped apart its pavement after Jeff Gordon won the second race of the Sprint Cup season in February, and now the track has a brand new surface and configuration.

That has led many people to say this race will replace Talladega as the wild card in this year’s Chase. Those claims might prove to be correct; the drivers sure had concerns about the quality of racing the track will produce this weekend because they had trouble working in a second groove.

However, all of those concerns were about how exciting the race would be, not which cars would run well and which would struggle. This race has been billed as a race where it will be a free-for-all to the front of the field and some random driver could take charge of the race.

That is extremely unlikely to happen. Talladega and Daytona are wild cards, and people had similar feelings when the Car of Tomorrow was first introduced in 2007. Many people thought the new car design would even the playing field and also-rans would become weekly contenders. Well, that didn’t happen.

Kyle Busch won the Car of Tomorrow’s first race at Briston in March 2007, and Hendrick Motorsports went on to dominate the rest of the season and Jimmie Johnson picked up his third consecutive championship.

So, while it might take a little longer for teams to dial in their cars throughout the weekend because they have little to no notes on the new track, this likely won’t be a race where unexpected drivers run up front.

The usual suspects will probably run well, especially those drivers that typically run well on flat, one-mile or less race tracks.

The championship contenders Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards will also probably be near the front because they have to. Teams in the championship hunt have to raise their performance as the season winds down toward Homestead, and they usually do. Last year Johnson and Kevin Harvick finished fifth and sixth, respectively, in the fall race at Phoenix, and Denny Hamlin finished 12th but was in contention to win the race had fuel mileage not set him back.

Overall, this race might not be as much of a surprise and people might think. The good teams will still be good, and all of the drivers will figure out how to race on the new configuration pretty quickly.

As far as the quality of racing is concerned, it’s not like we haven’t had several races this year that have been single-file all day long and nobody can pass. Tracks such as New Hampshire weren’t recently repaved and the two races there were as stale as it gets.

People like to think there has to be at least two grooves of racing to make it exciting, but look at what happened at Bristol Motor Speedway, for example. The one-groove racing was some of the most exciting in the sport. Once the track added a second groove the excitement level noticeably dropped.

Maybe, just maybe, the winner of Sunday’s race will have to use a little bump-and-run move to get to Victory Lane. That would be exciting, wouldn’t it?

The possibility certainly exists for this race to be a wild card where different drivers take control of the race because they magically hit on the right setup and the field parades around the track single-file 312 times. But, it is also quite possible the race will be similar to plenty of other previous races in the Sprint Cup Series this season.

Make sure to check out the Monday Morning Crew Chief Facebook page as the crew chief will be live from Phoenix International Raceway throughout the weekend.

Jimmie Johnson’s worst Cup season could start new era in NASCAR

Jimmie Johnson’s five-year championship run will likely end this year, and compared to the lofty standards Johnson has set, it will come crashing to an end.

Johnson visited Victory Lane just twice this season. While many drivers would love to have two wins in a season, two wins is a disappointment for the #48 team that has won at least three races and finished no lower than fifth in the standings during Johnson’s nine full seasons.

Wins aren’t everything in NASCAR. Just ask potential champion Carl Edwards, who could win the championship with one win on the season and none in the Chase. But, Johnson and the #48 team have not performed at the same level this year as they have for nearly the past decade and currently sit sixth in the points standings. The only race Johnson dominated this year was his win at Kansas Speedway in October.

For the last nine years, Johnson has been what Jeff Gordon was to the sport during the mid to late 90s. He won a lot, but he also tended to stink up the show in the races he won.

Johnson has also struggled compared to his career norm in categories other than wins. He has 14 top-five finishes and 21 top-10 finishes, which are both close to career lows. He also hasn’t sat on the pole once this season, another feat he has accomplished at least once in every season of his career.

Instead of a bunch of wins, Johnson has finished second or third eight times this year.

In the past, Johnson has been able to turn second- and third-place finishes into victories. Several of his wins would come on weekends where he qualified either on the pole or in the top five, and he would generally be on top of the speed charts in all of the practice sessions leading up to the race.

Those were the weekends where it felt like the race was just a formality to make his Victory Lane celebration official.

Now the championship streak is all but over, and it is amazing how fast the car that might as well have been painted in gold the last five years can start to look flawed. The #48 team’s pit stops have been inconsistent at best for much of the year, the setups have not been spot on and Johnson has been involved in several incidents late in the season that he usually gets out of the way before the Chase rolls around.

Johnson will be a championship contender for years to come, but we may have seen the end of his dominant days. Gordon looked unbeatable for nearly a decade, as well, but he since has struggled to be a consistent championship threat.

There doesn’t appear to be a steady, young driver that is ready to take Johnson’s place as the next dominant driver in the sport, so maybe the next few years will have one of the things the Chase was designed to accomplish in the first place: a little bit of parity.

NASCAR had a different champion in six of the seven years immediately before it implemented the Chase format. It can happen in NASCAR; it’s just been so long ago that many people have forgotten what life was like before Johnson’s championships.

It will look a little weird Nov. 20 to have somebody not in a Lowe’s firesuit raise the Sprint Cup Series trophy at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but there’s a chance that could be the new normal.

Rating the AAA Texas 500: 3 Stars ***

If it wasn’t a two driver race for the Sprint Cup Series championship coming into Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway, it certainly was leaving the track. The eighth race in the Chase gets a 3 Star Rating, but it defintely helped stoke the coals for a great championship battle.

Tony Stewart has been simply amazing since the Chase began. He is now just three points behind points leader Carl Edwards and picked up his fourth win of the season Sunday at Texas. Oh wait, that’s his fourth win of the Chase, as well.

My, what a difference a couple of months can make. Stewart said he and his team didn’t even deserve to be in the Chase after a ninth-place finish in August at Michigan, and he was one of the final drivers to hold on to a Chase spot based on points, considering he had no wins at the time.

Now he is the leading challenger in the fight for the championship. Edwards may lead the points standings and have finished second Sunday, but Stewart has all of the momentum right now. Stewart is on a Jimmie Johnson-type run in this Chase, and we’ve seen how that has worked out the past five years.

Speaking of Johnson, we can now put a fork in his bid for a sixth-straight championship. He currently sits 55 points out of the lead in sixth with just two races to go. And with the way he ran Sunday, that #48 car is not running well enough to win a championship even if he was in contention.

With the new points system this year, it has taken a full eight races to separate the Chase drivers to put the championship battle in a manageable perspective. The standings are more fluid under the new system, and a driver almost has to prove they can’t run up front for several weeks before people feel comfortable ruling them out of the Chase.

Now the stage is set. It will be Edwards vs. Stewart in what looks to be a thrilling run to the finish. Yes, there are three points separating the two drivers, but they might as well be tied. Whoever finishes better in these next two races, even if it by just one position, will in all likelihood win the championship.

It will be tough for fans to come up with something to complain about as far as the championship picture is concerned this year. For those tired of Johnson, he won’t be a factor in the final two races. It was actually kind of shocking how little attention he received throughout Sunday’s race. Kyle Busch almost got more air time and he wasn’t even in the race. Maybe we’re just used to it all being about the #48 team during this time of the year.

Stewart and Edwards have also not raced conservatively lately, and Stewart has put his foot to the floor since the Chase started. He has taken chances, and for the most part they have all worked out.

That should make these next two weeks plenty exciting, especially with the unknowns about the track at Phoenix heading into next week. Hopefully the track is racy so these two championship contenders can go at it without any outside factors coming into play.

Enjoy the finish to the season, folks. It’s going to be a good one.

Edwards’ consistency, not wins, might win the championship

Carl Edwards leads the Chase by eight points over Tony Stewart and looks to be the favorite to win the championship with three races left, but he could do the unthinkable and win the title without a win in the Chase.

The #99 team has been the most consistent team throughout the entire season, and so far in the Chase. Sure, he may have run in the back much of the last two races, but they only award points for finishing position. Races such as the one Edwards had at Martinsville have always been the type of races that make a champion.

There is no better example of this than the team that has repeated near-perfection year after year to win the championship: the #48 team. It is big news when Jimmie Johnson doesn’t finish in the top 10, as opposed to when he has a good run. He gets more coverage after a bad race than a top-five finish simply because it happens so rarely.

The #48 team has been the best at turning a bad day into at least a decent day, and those consistent finishes have led to five consecutive championships.

The #99 team has been the best at salvaging bad days this year, and not-surprisingly Edwards currently sits in the lead.

Even after NASCAR has tried for years to change the rules to make the sport more about winning, Edwards could very well win this year’s championship with just as many wins as the guy who caused NASCAR to implement the Chase in the first place.

Matt Kenseth won just one race in his 2003 championship season, and NASCAR followed with a new playoff format the following year.

Now, after many tweaks to that system and an overhaul of how points are awarded this year, Edwards might do exactly what NASCAR wanted to prevent.

Edwards might win just one race on the season, and to make things worse, he could go winless in the Chase and still win the title. Does that mean we’ll get another new system next year?

That’s doubtful, but no matter how much NASCAR tries to change the meaning of the sport and make the championship more about winning, consistency still wins championships.

Johnson won the most races in only two of his five championship seasons. If NASCAR wanted wins to determine championships, it should’ve quit putting a costume on the points system and based the championship strictly on wins.

However, the problem with that is most years the end of the season would actually be less exciting, and often the champion would have the title wrapped up at least one race in advance. That would really bring things full circle as drivers clinching the championship before the final race was another issue the Chase was supposed to address.

Whoever wins this year’s championship won’t have it wrapped up before the final race at Homestead, but they might not have to win any of the final three races to win the championship.

That’s fine. The best team this year will still have the Sprint Cup Series trophy.

Rating the TUMS Fast Relief 500: 5 Stars *****

The Sprint Cup Series visited the shortest track on the schedule at Martinsville Speedway, but it had just as much action as the previous week’s race at Talladega Superspeedway, the longest in NASCAR. The race at Martinsville continued to jumble the Chase standings and receives a 5 Star Rating.

This race took components from several of the other 5 Star races this season. It began with hard driving from the drop of the green flag that resulted in several early wrecks, similar to the September race at Richmond, and around lap 100 the top five included drivers such as A.J. Allmendinger and Casey Mears. Those type of names don’t usually show up that high on the scoring pylon unless it’s at Talladega or Daytona.

And Brian Vickers wrecked.

After the initial scramble, the race settled down and big-name drivers such as Kyle Busch, Jeff Gordon and Denny Hamlin led for long stretches.

Until Brian Vickers wrecked.

Finally, after a day that included a season-high 18 cautions, Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart found themselves at the front of the field and had a good battle to the finish line where Stewart notched his third win of the Chase.

After Brian Vickers wrecked.

Overall, Sunday’s race at Martinsville had more of the type of racing the sport had lacked through much of the Chase. Early on non-Chasers were in the mix and nobody held back and rode around. Nearly every car in the field had fairly significant damage not only at the end of the race, but most of them had torn up cars before the halfway mark.

Especially Brian Vickers, who barely had a car left after he was involved in five of the 18 cautions.

The points standings also took another crazy turn after the messes at Martinsville grabbed many of the title contenders. Matt Kenseth looked to be in great position to take over the points lead and Brad Keselowski would be within 10 points of the leader. But, both wrecked late in the race and now find themselves fifth and fourth, respectively.

Instead, Carl Edwards slipped out of Martinsville with a ninth-place finish and his points lead still intact despite running in mid-pack for much of the race and falling a lap down a couple of times.

Next up is Texas. Last year’s race at Texas was one of the most memorable of the season as Jeff Burton and Jeff Gordon fought on the backstretch, Kyle Busch flipped off an official and a myriad of other weird, but entertaining events throughout the race.

Plus, the Chase is as wide open at this point in the season as it has been in many years. By the way, Johnson is now back to within one race’s worth of points out of the lead. Right now it looks impossible, but so did a World Series title for the St. Louis Cardinals when they were 10-and-a-half games out of a playoff spot on Aug. 25.

Might this be the year of incredible comebacks?

Rating the Good Sam Club 500: 5 Stars *****

After five relatively boring races to start the Chase, the excitement level jumped up a notch at Talladega. The final restrictor-plate race of the season gets the first 5 Star Rating of the Chase.

Clint Bowyer won yet another photo finish Sunday at Talladega, edging out his teammate Jeff Burton at the line. Bowyer made a great move coming into the tri-oval and just barely kept Burton from coming back to beat him.

This race was one of the best restrictor-plate races since the two-car bump draft has been used in full force. While NASCAR didn’t end the two-car draft with its rule changes heading into the race, it did keep the pack a little closer.

Sunday’s race kind of combined the two styles of drafting. Cars had to be touching to make any speed, but other than Bowyer and Burton at the end, nobody really jumped out from the pack.

Plus, the emotional ride of a restrictor-plate race is unlike any other.

Before the gentlemen start their engines, there is a nervous tension that surrounds the racetrack. Talladega one of the two most exciting tracks on the schedule, but that also means it is one of the two most dangerous, as well, along with Daytona.

The drivers’ eyes tell the story on a Sunday morning at Talladega. There is a little more trepidation than normal, and Dan Wheldon’s wreck last week only made that feeling worse.

Then the race starts and all of the focus turns to the track. The first several laps are usually pretty intense as the field sorts itself out, but then the race settles into a rhythm. That rhythm remains until the laps wind down. Then the tension really starts to pick up.

The little bit larger packs Sunday brought back a few larger wrecks. A.J. Allmendinger and Mark Martin both got turned into the middle of the racetrack. Those spins would’ve taken out 20 cars a couple of years ago, but they also would’ve taken out maybe just a car or two in recent restrictor-plate races.

However, these wrecks are extremely dangerous. The hit Regan Smith took in Turn 4 was unbelievably hard.

After the big wreck, it’s time to settle the race among the cars that are left, and then things get wild as drivers such as Jeff Gordon manage to find their way through a hole that hadn’t even developed yet.

Finally, the final laps turn into a final lunge toward the finish line. This time Burton and Bowyer jumped out after the late restart and were able to settle things before the four-wide pack barreled across the finish line.

There is no other type of race with an intensity level as high for nearly as long. Once a restrictor-plate race is finished, fans often feel more exhausted emotionally than their favorite driver looks after he climbs out of his car.

Overall, this Talladega race was another wild ride. Many people might not like the two-car drafts, but this was the best version of that style of racing so far.

Now it’s time to finish the run to the championship. Carl Edwards extended his lead, Kevin Harvick took a big hit in the points standings, and Jimmie Johnson is 50 points out of the lead. That’s more than a full race, and doubts that he can come back get larger with every passing week.

Rating the Bank of America 500: 3 Stars ***

The first half of the race was more of the same boring follow-the-leader racing of the first four weeks of the Chase, but then Jimmie Johnson wrecked and guys started to fight for positions. While it still wasn’t a good race, Charlotte does barely jump up to grab a 3 Star Rating.

Without everything that happened at the end of the race, Kyle Busch would have easily put this one to bed. After Greg Biffle had a pit-road miscue to remove him from contention, Busch stomped the field similar to how he won the race in July at Kentucky Speedway.

The first three-quarters of Saturday night’s race was awful. It felt like an extended version of the first three segments of the All-Star race where nobody challenges for a position.

But then the biggest moment of the night happened.

Jimmie Johnson was battling underneath Ryan Newman through turns 1 and 2 when he got loose, tried to save the car and turned up nearly straight into the wall.

The wreck obviously did some major damage to the #48 car and Johnson’s championship run as he is now eighth in the standings and 35 points out of the lead, but it could’ve done some serious damage to Johnson himself.

I think it’s safe to say that anybody who has been a NASCAR fan for at least 10 years held their breath when they saw the #48 car head toward the wall at that angle. On the surface, that wreck looked eerily similar to the one that killed Dale Earnhardt in 2001 at Daytona. The front end of the car caught the apron, pointed the car toward the wall and the driver was along for the ride.

Thankfully, and I know we say this every time there is a hard wreck, both the cars and the walls are incredibly safe.

Just when the quality of racing, or lack of it, starts to gnaw at a race fan’s mind, something like Johnson’s wreck happens and reminds us all that right now the cars have to be built this way. Johnson can now add his list to the half-dozen or so drivers who have had the cars and SAFER barriers save their life, or at least save them from serious injury. But, with Dan Wheldon’s fatal wreck Sunday, the work to improve safety will never end.

Now, the other factor of Johnson’s wreck is that it will take a wild charge from the #48 team to come back and win championship #6. Even with his average runs in the first two races of the Chase, Johnson still was well within striking distance to take the lead. That is now gone. Johnson is going to have to be nearly perfect even to be in the championship conversation come Homestead.

On a lighter note, Matt Kenseth won the race and made a great move to get around Busch after the final restart. He may have won the race by nearly one second, but he had to make the move early in the run or Busch might have been able to hold him off.

Hopefully the finish at Charlotte will spark a wild race at Talladega. The first half of the Chase has been tepid, at best. The rule changes to the cars at Talladega might change the style of racing a bit, but the sport needs a race that has people talking nonstop about the actual race for the following week instead of the championship situation.

Will Bowyer be better at Michael Waltrip Racing?

One of the final major pieces of the 2011 Silly Season fell in place last week when Clint Bowyer finally announced he will be moving to the #15 Toyota for Michael Waltrip Racing in 2012.

But, is this a good move for Bowyer?

Ever since Bowyer broke into the Sprint Cup Series with Richard Childress Racing in 2006, he has been a fringe contender for the Chase. Some years he squeaks in and makes it, other years he misses by just a few points.

This year he missed by just a few points, but Childress couldn’t put together a sponsorship deal to keep Bowyer in the #33 so Bowyer will try his hand as the third car at Michael Waltrip Racing.

On the surface this looks like a win-win situation for everybody. Waltrip gets a high-profile driver that has consistently finished better than his current two drivers, David Reutimann and Martin Truex Jr, and Bowyer gets a fresh start after several up-and-down years for Richard Childress Racing.

However, people who think Bowyer is instantly going to be as much of a Chase contender next year as he has been in the past need to temper their enthusiasm. Just because he’s helping an organization expand and has full sponsorship doesn’t mean he’s going to succeed. Just ask Truex Jr.

The driver of the #56 car hasn’t won a race since joining MWR in 2010 and finished 22nd in the points standings.

Michael Waltrip Racing is still a young organization and growing each year, but this isn’t a group that has consistently won. In fact, it has hardly won at all.

Reutimann won at Chicago in 2010, but his best points finish was 16th in 2009. He and Truex Jr. are currently 28th and 22nd in the standings, respectively.

So, Bowyer is leaving an organization that has won 10 times in the past two years and had drivers contend for the championship to a team that has won one race in the past two years and has yet to put a team in the Chase.

Sure, it’s nice to think Bowyer will help raise the performance level at MWR, but many people hailed Truex Jr.’s move to the #56 in the same way. Granted, Bowyer has had more success in his career than Truex Jr., but it is going to be an uphill climb for the new #15 team.

Bowyer may have had to move because Childress couldn’t field a car for him next year, but he and the #15 have a lot of work to do just to maintain the performance Bowyer had at RCR.

Rating the Hollywood Casino 400: 2 Stars **

Sunday’s race at Kansas certainly looked like a lot of Chase races in the past five years as Jimmie Johnson ran his trademark Chase-dominating race and scored his second win of the season. However, he stunk up the show, which turns in the fourth 2 Star Rating in the four Chase races.

Wow, has Kansas become the new California? In past years, the Chase race at California was the most predictable race of the season. Johnson would dominate. Period. Move on to the next race.

Well, he did the same thing Sunday.

While NASCAR may be pleased that the points standings are remaining close, this certainly looks very similar to the last five years. That #48 car was on a rail nearly the entire race Sunday. When that team hits the setup right, nobody can catch it.

Overall, the race at Kansas emphasized the issues many NASCAR fans love to complain about. Johnson kicked the field’s butt, there were debris cautions and much of the race was devoid of any action. It’s wonderful that the middle of the field looks like a swarm of bees after restarts, but some of that action has to continue after the first few laps.

After the field settled down after the restarts, that was it. Everybody rode around until the next pit stops.

It’s not the drivers’ faults, necessarily. The racing, or lack thereof, we have seen in the first four Chase races isn’t terribly different than several of the races during the middle of the regular season.

Unfortunately, the current configuration of the cars makes it incredibly difficult to pass. Nobody made a pass at New Hampshire, the only lead changes at Dover came after a restart and Kansas looked similar to those past two races. The only difference was this track was a bit longer and had a tri-oval.

However, all is not lost. The lack of action in the first part of the Chase has kept the points standings bunched together. Right now eight drivers are still within 20 points of the lead, and the front three are separated by just four points. That could set up a wild run to the championship.

Also, the racing should get better in the coming weeks. Races at Charlotte are usually interesting and exciting more often than not. Talladega is a wild ride no matter the rules or style of racing and Martinsville has been the most exciting short track on the schedule the past few years.

So, shake off the early Chase cobwebs and get set for a stretch of races that hopefully turns up the excitement factor. Maybe excitement is too strong of a word at this point. A race that is a little more watchable would be a good start.

Thank goodness most of the Chase has yet to be run. Although the standings are tight, the races have had very little tension.

The next few races have to be better. But hey, they can’t be much worse.

Sorry folks, Jimmie Johnson will be a factor in this year's Chase

After two weeks of people thinking, hoping and even begging themselves to believe that Jimmie Johnson might be too far out of the points lead to come back and win yet another championship, he dashed all of those dreams in one week.

Johnson finished second last week at Dover and now sits fifth in the points standings just 13 points behind co-leaders Kevin Harvick and Carl Edwards.

Of course all of the talk about the #48 team’s demise was incredibly premature. That would be like saying the New England Patriots won’t be a factor in the NFL playoffs. These teams are too good to suddenly fall apart.

However, I don’t think anybody expected Johnson to be so close after just one good run, and it is a little scary to think what he could do to the Chase standings if he puts together a string of top-five finishes.

When Johnson started the Chase with a 39th-place finish at New Hampshire in 2006, it took him until the eighth race of the Chase to make it back to the top.

This year Johnson cut his point deficit from 29 to 13 after finishing well outside the top 10 in the first two races and if everything fall right he could be back on top by Sunday at Kansas, but more likely it could be the sixth race of the Chase at Talladega or the following week at Martinsville.

While people may have thought, or at least wanted to believe, the new points system would make it more difficult for Johnson to dominate the Chase, it might actually make it easier for Johnson to run away with the trophy.

We saw earlier this season how much easier it is to gain ground in the points standings under this new system when Brad Keselowski jumped from 23rd to 12th in just six races.

That’s not to say that all 12 drivers, or even half of the Chase field will have a realistic chance at the championship as the season comes to a close, but the new system has made the standings more fluid.

When the new points system was announced before the season, a lot was made about how a bad finish hurt a driver more than in the past. But, the flip side of that argument is that a good finish helps in the standings more than ever.

It was never likely that the #48 to be out of the championship picture as the series heads to Homestead for the final race of the year, but the new points system may have made that even more of a pipe dream.

Yet, while the points system might make it easier for a driver to recover in the standings, it also makes it harder to keep the lead. No driver has dominated the standings during the regular season this year the way Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick did the past two years.

Right now the standings are tied, and the way the season has gone so far it would be shocking if the leader had more than a 10-point lead heading into the final race at Homestead.

Many fans will hope that leader is not Johnson, but last week at Dover showed it is going to take a substantial amount of bad luck to keep him from being a factor for the championship.

Rating the AAA 400: 2 Stars **

Somebody other than Tony Stewart finally won a race that didn’t come down to fuel mileage, but that doesn’t mean the race at Dover was any more exciting. The third race in the Chase gets the third straight 2 Star Rating to start the playoffs.

Kurt Busch put his name in the ring as a possible championship contender as he held off Jimmie Johnson to score his second win of the season. He had a surprisingly consistent car most of the day and didn’t have to lose his mind in anger over the radio during the second half of the race.

Overall, this was typical of a relatively poor Dover race. The car that jumped out front on the restart simply could not be caught. There may have been 24 lead changes, but many of them came during green-flag pit stops. Otherwise, Carl Edwards, Johnson and Busch dominated their three chunks of the race.

Right now Dover might be a track that Goodyear needs to continue to test and tweak the tire compound. The style of racing Sunday was basically a mirror image of the race at New Hampshire. Nobody could run side-by-side even when the race came down to the finish.

There have been races at both New Hampshire and Dover that have been exciting throughout the years. At Dover, the three-way battle between the Roush-Fenway drivers in 2008 that Greg Biffle won and the race that following spring where Johnson beat Tony Stewart after a spirited battle.

That type of race has disappeared for the time being at Dover. For whatever reason, the tires are laying down an incredible amount of rubber in the turns and it has made for follow-the-leader racing.

Right now the racing styles at Dover and Bristol are flipped. The drivers can race all day long at Bristol side-by-side but they can’t run more than a lap or two that way at Dover.

Fans want to see the single-file racing at the half-mile Bristol track because that track is short enough that drivers can move each other out of the way to gain a spot. At the mile-long Dover track, side-by-side battles are far more exciting.

Anyway, the other part to Sunday’s race involved the championship standings. Right now we’ve got a tie between Kevin Harvick and Edwards, but the intrigue begins with Busch and Johnson in fifth and sixth.

Both drivers moved up five spots and have shut down the talks that both of them are already out of the championship battle. Ryan Newman and Denny Hamlin might be out of the championship picture, but not these two past champions.

Next week the series will head to Kansas for another go around on the ever-exciting Kansas Speedway. Don’t worry folks, only one more week before the Charlotte, Talladega, Martinsville stretch.

The championship might be decided in those three races. The next race at Kansas will just be another week teams have to be careful not to cause a problem that will put them behind when the interesting part of the Chase begins at Charlotte.

Rating the Sylvania 300: 2 Stars **

Another Chase race, and another fuel-mileage win for Tony Stewart. The first two Chase tracks might look different, but their races were nearly the same. New Hampshire draws the second consecutive 2 Star Rating to start the Chase.

Stewart and the #14 sure have the fuel-mileage game figured out right now. Both at Chicago and New Hampshire he had not only a good car, but he and his team put themselves in position to take advantage of the situation. Last week he had to hold off the field, this week he had to wait for Clint Bowyer to run out of gas to take the lead.

This race was nearly a mirror image of last week’s race at Chicago, except the sky was finally blue with hardly any clouds.

As for the action on the track, both races were extremely clean. Chicago had twice as many as New Hampshire’s three cautions, but only one actually came from a wreck. Everything else was a myriad of reasons that didn’t involve cars being damaged.

Also, nobody made a pass Sunday. We saw this in the July race at New Hampshire, as well. Once the field settled down after a restart, everybody pretty much remained in their same spot.

That’s not to say the drivers simply took it easy all day. Sure, that may be part of the problem the past two weeks, but right now the setup of the cars does not make for good racing at New Hampshire.

Even last year, the drivers beat and banged their way through the race, and that has been fairly common in the past several years. That’s not the case this year. The New Hampshire races this year weren’t far from the restrictor-plate race at the track in 2000 when Jeff Burton led the entire race.

Along with the cars not matching up with the track very well, the fact that the Chase has started also plays a part in why these races have been so tame.

It’s not that this group of drivers can’t mix it up. They could barely get through 30 laps at Richmond without taking each other out. The Chase drivers have to play it safe right now, especially with the new points system. Denny Hamlin is 66 points out, and out of the championship picture.

Jimmie Johnson finished 18th Sunday and is 29 points out of the lead in 10th. That margin, however, is not insurmountable. Johnson has climbed out of similar holes to go on and win the championship, and he isn’t a full race out of the lead yet. That’s when things start to get scary, and Hamlin is already a race and a half behind points leader Stewart.

Still, these two races cannot be used to truly measure the Chase drivers’ success and predict how the rest of the Chase will play out. Although right now it seems possible, not every race is going to come down to fuel mileage. It would be shocking if it came into play next week at Dover. It could well be the fifth race at Charlotte Motor Speedway before we start to see who is going to be a factor for the championship at Homestead.

So far this year’s Chase has only taught us one thing: Save fuel; it’s a killer to run out.