Mike Mulhern

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Carl Edwards blisters the field to win the Texas 500, on a ragged day for Jimmie Johnson

Carl Edwards, with his signature victory backflip, won a dramatic Texas 500 to fight his way back into championship contention with Jimmie Johnson (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

By Mike Mulhern

FORT WORTH, Texas

So Carl Edwards was right – this championship isn’t over after all.
Edwards vindicated that claim, drove a masterful race, overpowering his competition for his eighth Sprint Cup win of the season. But he needed to stretch his gas to the very limits down the stretch to win Sunday’s Texas Dickies 500.
So Sprint Cup leader Jimmie Johnson finally stumbled, after seven brilliant weeks in the playoffs. And Edwards has closed the points gap to 106 with only two races to go, Phoenix and Homestead.
“Fuel mileage was big,” Edwards said, in understatement after finishing 10 seconds ahead of also-gambling Jeff Gordon. “Bob Osborne came up with a way for us to win it.
“We’re closing down on Jimmie, and that’s good. We took a big chunk out of that lead. It’s all fun at this point. We can race as hard as we want.

“First, Bob said ‘We’re two-tenths of a lap short, so conserve.’ Then he said “We’re four laps short.’ Then he said ‘Conserve.’ I could tell he wasn’t really sure what we had.
“I was so nervous. I thought there was no way we could finish the race like that.
“Of all the ways to win a race, winning on fuel mileage may not seem the most exciting….
“But we feel good we can perform well enough on the track to win this championship.
“It’s cool to be surrounded by guys this intelligent and this bold enough to make decisions like that.
“We almost won Kansas by keeping our foot on the gas; and we did win this one by keeping our foot off the gas.
“I wouldn’t have been mad with Bob if we had run out of fuel, because I know he wants to win this thing as much as I do.”

Jimmie Johnson got off to a bad start Sunday at Texas and never got in the game, and Carl Edwards chopped the championship lead almost in half, with two races to go (Photo by Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR)

“We were very, very close on fuel,” Osborne conceded. “I can’t believe this race came down to fuel mileage.
“We knew we were going to be short. So we went to the drawing board, and figured out halfway through that last run that we could make it.
“A good ending to what was a bad situation. The decision was not blind. There was a lot of data and analysis that went into that decision.
“But if it hadn’t worked out, well, I’ve made poor decisions in the past and I’ll make poor decisions in the future, and I’ll learn from them and go on.
“If the points had been closer, we wouldn’t have made the same move. But this was a risk I thought was worth taking.”
“I knew we were getting better fuel mileage than our other cars, and I didn’t understand why,” Roush said. “Whether it was something in Carl’s line, or his not using as much brake as the others.
“But I questioned the decision. And my man confirmed Carl would be a mile and a half short. And we knew Greg Biffle would be seven laps short.
“But Carl and Bob figured it out.
“But you couldn’t make the assumption you could try it again and do it again. But Carl did it.
“So God bless Texas.
“We’d figured it Jimmie finished at least ninth these last three races he’d beat us for the championship. But now I think this moves him down to where he has to finish fifth.”

Indeed – Edwards led 212 of the 334 laps, overwhelming his rivals…only see Gordon and crew chief Steve Letarte setting up a gas mileage gambit of their own…which would have been the winning strategy if Osborne hadn’t decided to gamble too.
That both Edwards and Gordon could make the distance was amazing, though both men slowed considerably in the final miles.
Edwards stretched his final fill-up 103 miles – 69 laps – in a very daring gamble.
“But they had nothing to lose,” Gordon said.
That’s because Edwards came into this race 183 points behind Johnson, who only had to cruise these final three races en route to a third straight title.
Now, however, Edwards and Osborne have made a game of it. And Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus were both clearly rattled by the disappointments of the warm sunny afternoon, and the late race run to the checkered under the lights.
Greg Biffle, Edwards’ teammate, finished fifth and also gained on Johnson, going to Phoenix 143 back.

It was a ragged day for Johnson, who had averaged a sizzling 3.7 finish the first seven races of the 10-race chase.
Johnson never led a lap, was never in contention, lost a lap early, and couldn’t even get the Lucky Dog to get that lap back.
“That stunk,” Johnson griped. “It was not the day we wanted.
“We never could get to that first car one lap down (to get the lucky dog) and couldn’t get back on the lead lap.”
Just 150 miles into the 500, Edwards had lapped struggling Johnson, effectively pulling within just 64 points of the tour leader, in what would have been a major gain in the playoffs. And midway through the race Johnson was still mired in 22nd, while Edwards and teammate Greg Biffle were running 1-2. So Biffle at that points was just 110 points down.
And that’s generally the way the game went the rest of the afternoon.
Then, after draining most of the excitement out of the 3-1/2-hour race with such a dominating performance, Edwards suddenly found himself on the horns of a dilemma: Should he follow the usual game plan and pit for a quick top-off of gas late, with less than 20 miles to go….or should he gamble on being able to stretch his fuel?
And then why gamble at all – if he’d lost the gamble and ran out of gas, he’d have probably finished 12th, and gained only a few points.
But then Gordon had already decided to gamble on fuel too, and Gordon made it. So if Edwards had stopped, he’d have lost the race.
How much of a gamble was Osborne’s move?
“I don’t think Bob was swinging for the fence with that call,” Johnson said. “I think they knew they could make it.
“I’m just more frustrated that we didn’t do the job we needed to do today. If we lose some points to those guys, I can handle that. But to go a lap down and not be able to make it back up, I am frustrated about that.
“We’ve still got 400 miles at Homestead and 300 miles at Phoenix. That’s a lot of racing yet to go.
“And that comfort margin has closed up.
“My goal at Phoenix is to lead the most laps and win the race and go to Homestead with more points than those guys.”

Agree? Disagree? Don’t just brood. Express yourself here, and make your voice heard clearly in NASCAR headquarters in Daytona and Charlotte and in NASCAR race shops throughout North Carolina and the rest of the country.
We want your reaction, so please comment on this story and offer your own opinions and insight, on this topic, on our NASCAR videos, and anything about NASCAR. Any questions, just ask Mike at . And bookmark this page for continually updated NASCAR reports: http://independenttribune.net/index.php/sports/mulhern/

Carl Edwards needed a miracle to get back into title contention....and he made it happen Sunday at Texas. (Photo by Geoff Burke/Getty Images for NASCAR)

(0) Comments •

Jimmie Johnson stumbles, and Carl Edwards wins Texas 500 to get back in the title chase with 2 to go

Carl Edwards (R) may not win this championship, but he’s darned sure going to have fun these last two weeks of the season. Here he and famous chef Rachael Ray team in ‘Asphalt Chef’ competition at Texas Motor Speedway (Photo Credit: Robert Laberge/Getty Images

By Mike Mulhern

FORT WORTH, Texas
So did Carl Edwards finally rattled Jimmie Johnson’s cage?
“Sometimes you can have a little fun playing catch-up,” Edwards said happily, giddy really, after his eighth tour win of the season, chopping Johnson’s Sprint Cup tour lead almost in half with two races to go.
“I was thinking ‘Are you sure you want me to start driving slower?’” Edwards said with a laugh after winning a race that suddenly turned into a gas mileage game in the final 20 minutes. “‘We’ve got a 12-second lead? Are you sure?’
“I was sure they’d missed seeing a car there somewhere.”
“Carl has always been hard to slow down,” gambling crew chief Bob Osborne said dryly.

Carl Edwards (99) puts Tony Stewart down a lap during the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Dickies 500 on Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway. Edwards dominated the race, leading the more laps than any other driver. (Photo Credit: Chris Graythen/Getty Images)

Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus were almost picture perfect through the first seven races of the 10-race championship chase. But Round Eight didn’t go quite the same way.
And the frustration was clear: “We were just off on the first run or two of the race, and got a lap down,” Johnson said.
“Then, with the lack of cautions we could just never get back on the lead lap.
“I ran around Greg Biffle and Kyle Busch and Clint Bowyer (all running on the lead lap) all day long, and they finished top-five. If things had been different, we could have been up there too. But we just got behind at the start and could never get back up.
“I’ve known all along we were going to have to fight every week for this thing. We had a nice, big points lead (183 at the start of the race over Edwards). And we still have a great points lead (106).
“There are two races left, and we’ll go to Phoenix, one of our great tracks, and do it again this week.
“We are definitely disappointed with our performance the first couple of runs. After that, we were comparable, we were fair. We just could never get back on the lead lap…and that’s the way it goes.”
That a Jack Roush man won here isn’t any surprise. His drivers have won seven of the 16 races here at Texas Motor Speedway.
And it wasn’t a surprise it was Edwards, who won here in the spring too.
Now Edwards heads back to the woods to do some more hunting. “I haven’t read a thing in the papers, haven’t been thinking a bit about Jimmie. Last week I was out in the tree stand in the woods in Missouri….you can call it hunting, but I called it watching….trying to sleep really,” Edwards said with a laugh. “And I’m heading back out there this week.”

The cold hard facts: If Johnson can come out of Phoenix next Sunday night with a 196-point lead on Edwards and Biffle, he’ll clinch the title. To do that, Johnson would have to beat Edwards by 90 points and Biffle by 52 points.
And if Johnson can come out of Phoenix with a 162-point lead he would only need to start the Homestead race to clinch. To do that, Johnson would have to beat Edwards at Phoenix by 56 points and Biffle by 18.
So if Johnson finishes seventh or better at Phoenix and Homestead, he’ll win the championship no matter what Edwards and Biffle do.

One of the sharpest incidents of the day was between Juan Pablo Montoya and David Gilliland, and it will likely lead to penalties.
They were dueling and crashed. Montoya’s car was knocked out of the race, and NASCAR officials then parked Gilliland for the rest of the day.
“It’s just frustrating like that when idiots get in the way,” Montoya said.
“I was running high the lap before, and he went inside of me. He ran straight to the wall (to chop him off), and I tried to get away. Then he (almost) put me into the wall.
“So I went into turn one and punted him a little, to say ‘Hey, you’re running like 50 laps down…..’
“If I’d wanted to wreck him, I could have wrecked him.
“Then when we came off the corner, he wrecked us. To make a point, I guess.
“Our cars are starting to be really strong, and then this….”
Gilliland was not happy about the entire situation either: “It’s a shame we’ve got some torn up cars, and we got parked.
“I got up in front of him, and my spotter said I was clear, so I slid up in front of him. And he jacked my rear wheels off the ground going down the back straightaway, and then got into me again going into turn one and two and jacked me up way up the track.
“I was trying to let him go, and I got a good run off the corner…and just misjudged it coming down across him.
“It’s unfortunate because we had a pretty good day going.”

Maybe Jeff Gordon should go green from now on, as well as he ran Sunday at Texas. He finished second in the Texas 500 in his best run ever here (Photo by Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR)

So Jeff Gordon, despite his best run ever at this track, remains winless this season, with two more shots. He’s never won here, but he won the pole and ran well.
“I was pretty optimistic when the green dropped, because when we took off the car felt great,” Gordon said.
“The car started going away a little, but we maintained top-five.
“But the --typical Texas—we started losing the handle on it as the sun went down. We lost track position on one run where we got real loose. Man, what a struggle when that happened.
“We lost a lap…but the cautions fell our way, and the team never gave up.
“Then (crew chief) Steve Letarte made a great call (to stretch fuel).
“He said ‘I think we’re going to be a lap short.’ So I conserved. I thought we could make it, and we did.
“Steve was apologizing to me because he thought he was going to get us a win. But I said ‘Man, you can’t apologize about finishing second on a day like today. That was like a win.”

Carl Edwards celebrates winning the Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. (Photo by John Harrelson/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Crew chief Bob Osborne made a daring call for Carl Edwards to stretch his gas the final 103 miles, and the Jack Roush team chopped Jimmie Johnson’s Sprint Cup tour lead to just 106 points with Phoenix and Homestead yet to run. (Photo Credit: John Harrelson/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Saturday, November 01, 2008

So it’s Texas—Let’s write off Jeff Gordon again? Not so fast…..

Maybe it’s just the change of colors: Jeff Gordon was fastest in practice and won his first pole at Texas Motor Speedway (Photo Credit: Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR)

FORT WORTH, Texas
Jeff Gordon on the pole at Texas?
Well, it is Halloween weekend, and strange things have been happening.
And fading title challengers Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle and Jeff Burton are still hoping for something strange to strike the Jimmie Johnson camp, to shake up the championship picture.
Johnson has been picture-perfect so far in the chase, with a stunning 3.7 finishing average in the first seven races of the 10-race playoffs. His 5.0 average in winning his second series title last season was amazing enough, particularly since the guy he beat – teammate Jeff Gordon, who dominated the regular season and had a great chase too – averaged a sizzling 5.1, which would have been good enough to win in just about any other scenario.
So consider the odds: can Johnson keep up this torrid pace? Or are he and crew chief Chad Knaus due for a bad afternoon somewhere in the final 15 days of the season?
If Johnson and Knaus don’t stumble at least once from here to the finish line, expect more than just grumbling about the chase rules when the tour stars hit New York City’s Waldorf for the awards banquet.
Already various possible rules tweaks have been raised in the NASCAR garage.
Yes, Johnson is one of the best drivers in the sport, and Knaus is one of the best crew chiefs, and car owner Rick Hendrick is one of the top car owners. But this is not just sport, this is entertainment, and leveling the playing field – for whatever the reason – is classic NASCAR strategy.
The real telling point in this, of course, isn’t what rivals in the garage may say, but rather what fans in the stands may say: if there are too many empty seats in these final three races, that could push NASCAR to do something….not to slow Johnson and Knaus, but to keep the championship game as wide open as possible through the full 10 chase events.
However others here have their own agendas. Only four men are even in the title game now, and the rest of this afternoon’s 43-car field have other things on their minds.
Like winning.
Ask Jeff Gordon, on the pole for the 3:30 p.m. EST start. (Dale Earnhardt Jr. keeps raising the point that these NASCAR events are starting way too late, that he thinks noon starts make more sense.)

Jeff Gordon: at Texas, and looking for his first win of the season, and his first win at Texas Motor Speedway (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

Gordon has now gone more than a year without winning. This, after one of his most brilliant seasons, in which he probably should have won that fifth NASCAR title…if not for Johnson and Knaus.
“Texas has not been one of our best tracks,” Gordon says dryly.
Heck, this is where he had one of his most savage hits a few years back.
When the season opened Gordon and Johnson both looked strong at California in February, and Gordon could have won Las Vegas the next week but he made a bad move and crashed. Then, however, something changed. The Hendrick guys fell off the mark, and for months the story was Toyota’s Kyle Busch, out of the Joe Gibbs camp, versus Ford’s Carl Edwards, out of the Jack Roush camp.
Over the summer, when things were clearly not going Hendrick’s way, Johnson and Gordon stepped up their own testing to an unprecedented level. Now it’s finally paying off. For Johnson at least.
“We have made huge gains on these 1-1/2-mile tracks,” Gordon says. “Things I feel good about, and we can be consistent with.
“It is how you get good information to your team to fine-tune things.
“We are finding it…unfortunately finding it a little bit late.
“Not quite enough too late for here—this is great for us.
“It’s late in the season, and we haven’t gotten a win….we haven’t been able to qualifying for about a month (because of rain).
“We are certainly a lot more comfortable on these tracks than we were earlier in the season. Our cars are so much better now, with all of our testing.”
Still, Gordon has never run well here. “It has been pretty well documented how tough a weekend we had here in April,” he concedes.
At these speeds – 207 mph into the flat first turn—and as finicky as the car-of-tomorrow is aerodynamically in traffic, “track position is so important at this place,” Gordon says. “So we put a lot of focus on qualifying, and it paid off.
“It is so ironic that the last three tracks—Martinsville, Charlotte and Atlanta—were all tracks we felt we could win the pole….but we didn’t get the opportunity because of rain.
“And the last place I thought we could win a pole was here at Texas. But here we are. Anything is possible.”
Even a win? “I wasn’t expecting to get the pole, I can tell you that,” Gordon says cautiously. “I’m definitely not expecting to get the win either. But that doesn’t stop us.
“We know everybody is talking about us not winning, and certainly our stats here are not great. We’ll have to wait until Sunday to see how the race unfolds. I can tell you that track position is huge here and can play a big role.”
Hey, April here was no fun for him, Gordon says: “The car does the talking for me. I drive it in the corner, and it does whatever it is going to do.
“When the car does what I ask it to do, and it sticks, we go fast.
“In April we just weren’t even close off the truck. I knew we were in trouble. It just didn’t feel right.
“This is the exact opposite.
“Going through the transitions in the corners I’m not having issues I was having in the past.
“When you free the car up here, you just get loose-in and loose-off, and it doesn’t really fix the middle part of the corner.
“So this is definitely a boost to our team’s confidence.”
Maybe to the driver’s too.

Toyota has captured another NASCAR championship, here Friday night, with Kyle Busch’ second-place finish behind Chevy’s Ron Hornaday locking up Toyota’s third straight Truck tour manufacturer’s title.
It’s Toyota’s fourth manufacturer’s title since joining NASCAR in 2004. In late September Toyota clinched the 2008 Nationwide tour crown.
And Toyota is locked in a tight battle with Chevrolet for the Sprint Cup manufacturer’s title.
However Busch himself wasn’t happy with Friday’s second: “It’s just frustrating the NASCAR rule book is the way it is, with the restrictors and all of that.
“It’s hard to battle those Chevrolets and Fords, with the drag in our Toyotas and less front downforce and all of that stuff.
“Yeah, I’m complaining. I’m going to do it. I’m not going to going to sugar-coat it. I’m tired of it.
“Running second every week isn’t any fun.”

Want a great story in 2009? Mark Martin finally wins the NASCAR championship!

Mark Martin sits in his car in the garage during practice for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway (Photo by Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR)

FORT WORTH, Texas
Warhorse Mark Martin has been playing NASCAR since, let’s see, gosh, 1981?
And still going strong.
He was going to call it quits a couple years ago, and just dabble in some Truck racing. But then he thought better of it, got a new deal, moved to Chevrolet, after 19 seasons with Ford and Jack Roush. And now he’s moving right into the Rick Hendrick camp next season….for what he insists will be his final full-time season on the Cup tour.
Championship?
Well, hey, his new teammates, Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon, can certainly give him some tips there. Martin, of course, is easily the best NASCAR driver today never to have won a championship – each time he was within sight of the brass ring, NASCAR somehow managed to find some penalty to throw at him, in a strange run that once had Roush quite bitter about the bum deals.
Now Martin hasn’t won on the tour since Kansas in ‘05, but he came within a nose of winning the Daytona 500 last year, and he’s had shots throughout this season, while at DEI, to get back to victory lane. And next season he’ll probably be driving for Hendrick crew chief Alan Gustafson, who did such good work the last few years with Kyle Busch before Busch moved on.
That Martin wound up at DEI was a quirk. He’d signed a good deal with Bobby Ginn, but when Ginn discovered the rougher side of NASCAR economics and bailed in the summer of 2007, Martin and the new Ginn shop in Mooresville (a very nice operation put together by now Team Red Bull man Jay Frye) wound up as part of DEI.
But DEI at the moment is struggling. It’s got four teams in the top-35, but only one sponsor. And what happens next is unclear (which makes Martin Truex Jr.’s performance here in Sunday’s 500, from the front row start, probably quite important).
“I’ve had the time of my life driving for DEI and working with Tony Gibson and the team,” Martin says. “It’s been a really special year.”
Martin would have been in the Hendrick-Gustafson Chevy at Homestead for the season finale, but Hendrick was unable to put together a deal with car owner Richard Childress for a ride for Casey Mears, the man Martin will be replacing.
“So I’ll be home on my couching watching,” Martin says. His final race with Gibson and DEI will be next week’s tour stop at Phoenix.
Championship?
“I wasn’t the world’s biggest supporter of the chase format with they came out with it (in 2004), because I was a traditionalist,” Martin says.
“I felt if you built up a lead throughout the season that you ought to be able to hang onto it.”
Certainly Gordon last season could see the logic in that, since he would have won the title under the old format but he lost it under the new.
And this season, well, Kyle Busch rang up a huge points lead over the 26-race regular season only to get hit with a ton of bricks in the opening weeks of the chase and knocked out of contention in just a three-week span.
“But the chase did turn out to be great for the sport, and I became a fan of it, and I am a big supporter of it,” Martin now says.
“The one thing I did say was if you’re going to do that—start over with 10 races to go—and if that’s all about ‘excitement’—and it’s not really about anything else but generating excitement for the fans—then just make it ‘12, 11, 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.’”
That is, after each week of the chase the guy in last place gets the boot.
That might, however, require a separate points system for the chase drivers. But that’s been a point raised before. And it is logical – the men in the playoffs are racing each other for the title, so why should guys who didn’t make the playoffs in effect be able to take points away from them?
“I haven’t seen a computer model of how that would work,” Martin concedes. “But it seems it would keep the point system tighter.
“In the chase, the biggest thing to dig out of is if you have a 43rd place finish, and the other guys finish in the top-10. That’s awfully incredible to overcome.
“It might be easier to overcome that—and if it’s all about that—then I’d be for a system where you could only lose 10 or 11 points in a race.”
Indeed, two things clearly need changing in NASCAR’s championship points system: winning, or finishing in the top-three, should be much more important; and the ‘penalty’ for having a bad day should be much less critical.
The NASCAR system for years has emphasized consistency and not making mistakes, not having bad luck. What that means is teams are encouraged to stroke at times, or run conservatively.
NASCAR’s extra 10-point bonus this season for winning did virtually nothing to change that dynamic. Busch’s 80 extra points for his eight regular season wins were wiped out in just a few days.
And the Talladega crash four weeks ago essentially knocked Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle out of the title hunt in the blink of an eye.
No wonder Biffle is hot about things:
Yes, Talladega is a wild card race even when the title isn’t on the line.
But it’s clearly unfair to put a roulette wheel event like that in the heart of the chase; and next season the Talladega 500 will come as Round Seven of the chase, just 21 days from the finale. Yes, that may serve to sell tickets to the Talladega 500, but if an accident that afternoon takes out some title contenders again, then, well, NASCAR executives need only look in the mirror to see the reason for more slumping TV ratings, if that’s the result….again.
How much of an impact is Johnson’s championship runaway having on NASCAR’s TV ratings? Well, this Texas 500 is typically a big TV event, and the numbers from this thing could tell the tale.

Of course, Martin insists NASCAR overplays the championship thing to begin with: “The points thing has been overplayed for 15 years.
“It is about the race.
“It’s nothing about points to me, I don’t race points…and I still come to the track with every ounce of enthusiasm.
“The (marketing) strategy to make more out of the racing series by making the points more important for more media has worked. But at the end of the day, for many of us, it’s more about the race than it is about the points.”

For Martin, though, that’s all next year’s stuff. This season he’s been running part-time; this is his 23rd start, in race number 34 of the 36.
He’ll have a new sponsor next season at Hendrick’s….but his current sponsor – the U.S. Army – has provided some very emotional moments for him. Like those trips to Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
“I’m a little ashamed to say I’m 49 years old and I still look at myself and think I’m a kid….We take things for granted,” Martin says.
“The older we get, maybe the less we take for granted, but I certainly took for granted our men and women in uniform and the sacrifices they make.
“When I visit Walter Reed, and see those guys and women with great attitudes --- and I think I’ve had a bad day when my car runs bad.
“I look at them, and so many of them have great attitudes and yet they’re short a limb or two….
“That has changed my perspective.
“I wish I could hold onto that, as strong as the day I left Walter Reed.
“I’ve seen so many inspiring men and women, so committed, at such a young age. It’s made me really proud of our young people.
“Those are things I hope I hold onto as I move forward in life.”

NASCAR’s legendary Mark Martin, preparing for one more full-time charge for the championship that he’s never won. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)

For all Mark Martin is known for – as a gentleman on the track but rough when a man needs to be rough, and for his wisdom not only about driving tactics and strategies but also about racing in the big picture – there is one thing sometimes perhaps overlooked: his amazing work ethic.
So his praise here of soon-to-be-teammate Jimmie Johnson is not to be taken lightly:
“I’ve had the opportunity to spend a little time inside the walls of Hendrick Motorsports—and I’m a little ashamed I didn’t know this already: but Jimmie Johnson makes it look so easy that we don’t realize he’s not ‘just a lucky guy who gets to drive Chad Knaus’ car.’
“That’s a bit shallow of me to have thought that.
“The more I find out about Jimmie Johnson, the more I understand why he is experiencing the success he does. And that’s kind of cool.
“It’s nice to learn things, and I’ve certainly learned from being inside those walls—that Jimmie Johnson is incredibly committed.
“It reminds me of some young men from many years ago….
“Jimmie is willing to do whatever it takes to gain an advantage on the competition, whether it’s mental or physical or mechanical.
“That’s really cool.
“I’ve also learned along the way a renewed respect for the incredible talent Jeff Gordon has – that a lot of the success Jeff has experienced over the years came because of his incredible talent, and not because he drove the best race car.
“I guess you live and learn, and I’m sure I’ve got a lot more to learn. But those are two things I’ve really noticed over the past 12 months or so that I’ve been involved with Hendrick Motorsports.
“I’ve watched Jimmie all year, just like everyone else. And he ran good…but two races before the chase (California and Richmond), it was like incredible.
“And I watched Greg Biffle run just okay, and then he started off the chase like he was going to do what Jimmie and his guys appear they may do now.
“I’m like everybody else last week—I struggled around (Atlanta) 25th, and after the race I kept squinting my eyes at the scoreboard, and then I just had to ask ‘Did Jimmie really run second?’
“Now I finished 22nd, and I ran one whole fuel run (90 miles or so) not further than from here to the wall behind him. At that time I didn’t think they were running any better than we were.
“That’s how incredible those guys are.
“And when it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.
“If they get one more great race like that under their belt, then it’s going to be meant to be again this year.”

Friday, October 31, 2008

Are Jimmie Johnson’s rivals choking, or is it time for the NASCAR tour leader to move up to F1?

Crew chief Steve Letarte (R) may finally have found the magic touch for Jeff Gordon at Texas Motor Speedway. Gordon has never won here, but Friday he won the pole for Sunday’s 500 (Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)

FORT WORTH, Texas
If NASCAR’s 12-man, 10-race playoff for the championship, now in Year Five, was designed to pump up interest in the Sprint Cup title chase, well, this season that just hasn’t happened.
The game was blown open a month ago.
So, blame Jimmie Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus for being so darned good?
Blame their 11 rivals for choking?
Blame the playoff system, and tweak it?
“You just can’t take anything away from what Jimmie has been able to do,” Dale Earnhardt Jr., his teammate, says.
“The chase does what it’s supposed to do. Nobody can come up with a perfect formula for the chase that works every time.
“Jimmie and his guys are a dominant team…and you can’t handicap someone for being great.”
Jeff Gordon won the pole Friday for Sunday’s Texas Dickies 500, at 188.469 mph, and DEI’s Martin Truex Jr. made it an all-Chevy front row.
“I know it’s just a pole, but for us it’s a pole at Texas, and you could see that on the faces of my guys,” Gordon said. “I wasn’t expecting to win the pole, and I’m not expecting to win the race either, because this isn’t one of my best tracks. But that won’t keep us from trying.”

Chad Knaus: Mr. Wizard speaks with Jimmie Johnson during practice for Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup tour Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway (Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Has the chase points-formula really changed the championship dynamic? Perhaps. Still, even counting all the season’s points, regular season and the seven playoff races (including those 10-point winning bonuses), Johnson would still be atop the standings, by 98 points over Carl Edwards, and 203 over Kyle Busch.
But here’s a kicker: if Edwards hadn’t been penalized 100 points for that loose oil tank cover at Las Vegas, he’d be leading Johnson coming here, by a scant two points.

And if only Talladega had gone differently……
There, four weeks ago, Greg Biffle and teammate Edwards were battling for the race lead with only 25 miles to go, and Johnson was struggling just to hang in the top 10 there. Then Edwards and Biffle crashed—and that moment was the turning point of the championship season for all three.
When the race began, Edwards was just 10 points down to Johnson, and Biffle just 30 points down.
If Biffle and Edwards had just come out of that race with top-fives, they’d have picked up some 25 points on Johnson, and Edwards would have been the new tour leader.
Instead when they left the track, Edwards was 72 points down, Biffle 77. That’s a 100-point turnaround.
Even so, when Edwards and Biffle tangled, the ensuing mess blocked the entire track, and Johnson – you’ve got to see the video – was extremely lucky to escape.
If Johnson had gotten caught up too, then Jeff Burton, with his win the following week at Charlotte, would have been the new tour leader heading to Martinsville.
However Johnson did escape, and now he’s almost got a lock on a third straight NASCAR championship.
“Jimmie got through Talladega by the skin of his teeth,” Biffle says in amazement. “He just slipped through there.
“We all saw the wreck, we all saw him dodge the bullets and get through it.
“I’d say take Talladega out of the chase….because it’s happened every year. The same thing has happened every year at Talladega. When you go in there and penalize a team that’s worked as hard as all of us have, and we’re involved in a wreck because ‘something happened,’ heck, put Bristol in there or something else.”

Nevertheless, isn’t it time—isn’t it past time perhaps – for some of these NASCAR championship contenders to start thinking of ways to rattle Johnson’s cage?
Get him off his game.
Force him into mistakes.
If not in this season’s Sprint Cup chase, then for next year….because Johnson has been the man to beat the last several seasons, and no one seems to have a great game plan for stopping him.
Instead, with three races to go, Johnson not only looks invincible but it looks like his competition has all but given up, except Carl Edwards.
The late Dale Earnhardt won seven NASCAR championships, and he didn’t always have the best car and the best team. But he figured out ways to rattle his rival’s cage down the stretch, and force them into mental mistakes, bad moves.
Of course Johnson himself may simply be unflappable. His cool and his coolness under pressure is becoming legendary.
Mark Martin, to be Johnson’s teammate next season, says he’s been spending a lot of time at Rick Hendrick’s shop lately, and he’s been amazed at what he’s learned about Johnson: “He’s not winning championships just because he’s driving the best cars on the track. That’s shallow thinking.”

Intense: Carl Edwards at Texas Motor Speedway. (Photo by Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Yet obviously the championship game plans these other 11 men have been using this fall isn’t working that well. They’re not going to build a better, faster car than Johnson and Knaus, which seems to be the aim. They might build a car as good as Johnson’s, but better?
So why haven’t these title challengers this season taken a page from Earnhardt’s playbook and try things to knock Johnson and Knaus off their game – force them into enough tough situations that they might stumble?
Biffle says he likes that thinking: “That’s exactly right. But as soon as I can get my car close enough to his car, I will rattle his cage,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve got to get there first. I haven’t been able to catch him.”

Formula One’s Scott Speed, now a NASCAR Cup tour rookie, with crew chief Jimmy Elledge (Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Instead, Johnson’s rivals have been concentrating so much on technology as the solution. Maybe that’s one more example of too many engineers and too much engineering in the NASCAR game today. Or maybe it’s one more example of drivers simply making too much money and not being hungry enough….
If it’s all about ‘let the best car win,’ then why not just put the cars on chassis dynos and in wind tunnels and sell tickets….
This isn’t golf or tennis, this is racing. What would Earnhardt do?

Crew chief Greg Zipadelli, down to his final 16 days with Tony Stewart, watches practice at Texas Motor Speedway (Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)

But Burton isn’t buying any of this: “Ultimately we have to build a better car than Jimmie Johnson. We have to go around the track faster than they go around the track.
“Of course at this point, we could lead every lap and win every race from here on, and it won’t matter, if Jimmie doesn’t have any trouble.”

And then there is also the question is the NASCAR championship simply too big a deal now? Is it taking away from the racing on the track? Do fans really wake up on race day hoping to watch Earnhardt or Johnson or Biffle just have a good points day?
Earnhardt frames the questions differently: “What has happened is we’ve saturated the market.
“The NFL does the best job – they give you just enough to keep you wanting more. The model works.
“We have a long season like baseball and hockey, and we have lulls. We’re driven by the ability to make a dollar, and there’s no way we’d ever trim it down.
“But when we had a 28-race schedule, the sport was giving you just enough to really get excited about the next season.
“And when we started at noon (instead of much later Sunday afternoon starts), people were rushing to get from church to the track.
“We’ve made it too easy…and too much.
“We’ve lost a lot of the substance we had, and the character the sport had has changed.”

Green is good, for Jeff Gordon, on the pole for Sunday’s Texas 500 (Photo by John Harrelson/Getty Images for NASCAR)