Once again, Jimmie Johnson and the #48 team dominated the race. There were a few other contenders. Denny Hamlin, Kurt Busch and Mark Martin all maintained spots in the top five for much of the race, but there was no drama in this one. Anytime somebody seemed to be making up time on the leader, the lead would suddenly stabilize and things would continue as usual. Also, everybody thought short races were the next great thing to generate excitement, but I think last week would have been better had it been a 400 or 500 mile race. Shortening the length of races opens the door for more races like this one.
There were some positives on Sunday, but NASCAR once again touched that mean little button because, well, we don’t really know why they push the caution button every once in a while. The green flag racing was nice, but the race could have gone all 312 laps under green. However, NASCAR threw the caution flag for debris twice, and both times it caused wrecks soon after the following restart. Like I have said a million times here, more cars are damaged because of the debris cautions than there would be if the supposed “debris” was just left alone. Sure Dale Jr. may have still had an oil leak, but he would have caused an 11 car pileup if that incident had happened on the previous green flag run.
So, next week I will be back to gripe about the debris cautions for the final time, but in the meantime, there will likely be plenty of championship build up as the week goes on. It will be devastating if Johnson does not bring it home, but that does not look likely. As for Homestead itself, there have been good races at the track in the past; it’s just unfortunate that the race always gets overshadowed by the Championship. Just a quick note for all the Chase haters out there, under the old points format Jimmie Johnson would lead Tony Stewart by only 13 points heading into the final race next week. But hey, that system never produced any exciting finishes. I’m just saying. Have a good Championship week everybody.
