Motor Sports Weekly News

Story and photo by Drew Hierwarter

Last week in this space I wrote that it was too early to write off the NASCAR Chase for the Championship. I sincerely believed that Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Mark Martin, and Juan Pablo Montoya still had a shot. Then they all arrived at Lowes Motor Speedway.

 

Forget everything I said!

 

Crew chief Chad Knaus called the race weekend at Lowes “perfect”. The 48 car was fastest in every practice session, qualified on the pole, led the most laps, and won the race, gaining the maximum points available.

 

Matt Kenseth joked that Johnson’s race wasn’t perfect because he didn’t lead every lap. Minor point.

 

That “perfect” weekend combined with a disastrous race for his closest competitors gave Jimmy Johnson a 90 point lead with 5 races down and 5 to go in the Chase. That’s a bigger lead than he had at this point in the Chase in any of his three previous Championship winning seasons.

 

Second place in points, Mark Martin finished 17 th, but still retained his second place. Jeff Gordon finished 4^th and actually gained two spots up to 3^rd in spite of losing ground in total points. Tony Stewart finished 13^th, but the biggest loser among the top three chasing Johnson was Montoya who ended up 35^th, dropped 3 places in the Chase and is now 135 points behind.

 

For the rest of the twelve Chasers, the next five races are just for drill and bragging rights.

 

It’s not going to get any better for everyone else any time soon. The next race on the schedule is Martinsville. The 48 team has won five of the last six races there and Johnson has a 5.3 average finish at that track, best among all active drivers.

 

Need more? Johnson is the first driver to win 3 of the first 5 Chase races and he has won 17 of the 55 Chase races run in the six year history of the format. The next closest to that record are Greg Biffle and Carl Edwards with a “mere” 6 wins each.

 

Ever humble, Johnson said in a post race interview that; “There’s still a lot of racing left. Just one flat tire or something like that, and you can lose that 90-point lead.” Yea, and pigs will fly.

 

If we were talking about any other team than this one I would agree with him. But this team has the Chase format down to a science and I wouldn’t bet against them with somebody else’s money.