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This Week in Auto Racing November 1 - November 4
With IndyCar and Formula One seasons over and the Champ Car Series decided and irrelevant, it will be all NASCAR all the time until the end of the racing season.
Nextel Cup : Dickies 500 - Texas Motor Speedway - Fort Worth, Texas
Jimmie Johnson's second consecutive win, and series-leading eighth of the season, cut 44 points off his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon's lead to close within nine points of the four-time series champion.
But Johnson wasn't as dominant as he had been the week before at Martinsville. Instead, he did it with smart decisions from crew chief extraordinaire Chad Knaus and taking advantage of being in the right place at the right time.
It's a familiar refrain for the No.48 Lowe's Chevrolet team. They are frequently not the best car at the start of a race. But the team works and works on their car and by the end of the race they are usually one of the best on the track.
"Today wasn't the best day for this Lowe's car, it was decent but a fifth to eighth-place car " said Johnson, who won both Atlanta races this season. "Circumstances at the end really worked out for us and we took advantage of it...When I left pit road and there were five or six cars behind us on two tires, I knew we were in great shape."
Then when race leader Denny Hamlin stalled on the restart, Johnson was right there to jump on the opening and he took the lead. On the final green-white- checker restart he had a great jump and even if Dale Earnhardt Jr. hadn't crashed it was unlikely that Carl Edwards could have caught him.
It's now on to the Texas Motor Speedway and the two-man shootout for the 2007 Nextel Cup title continues. It's not a fluke that Gordon and Johnson are here. The statistics bare out that the two friends should be there.
Gordon has six wins, 20 top-fives and 27 top-10s in 33 events. He has led a series-leading 1,280 laps out of 9,669, (13.24%). He leads in pole wins (7). He has finished worse than 12th just four times all season.
Johnson has eight wins among his 18 top-fives and 21 top-10s. He is second to Gordon in laps led with 1,225 (12.67%).
By contrast Clint Bowyer, who is in third place overall -111 points back, has just one win, five top-fives and 17 top-10s.
Surprisingly, despite 81 career wins (sixth all-time), Gordon has never won a pole or a race at the Texas Motor Speedway. He did finish second in April 2002 and has six top-10s in 13 career starts.
Johnson has similar statistics at TMS - no poles, no wins, but six top-10s in eight career starts.
It appears that Gordon and Johnson will mirror each other all the way to Homestead where the championship will likely be decided on the final lap of the final race.
Busch : O'Reilly Challenge - Texas Motor Speedway - Fort Worth, Texas
Carl Edwards continues to stumble down the stretch, but it makes no difference in who will win the drivers championship. The No.60 Roush Fenway Racing drivers still leads the Busch Series championship by a whopping 531 points with three races remaining on the schedule.
But it would have made a nice finish to a tough week which started with his very public display towards Nextel Cup teammate Matt Kenseth.
"It was a very frustrating race, but I feel good," said Edwards on his team's website. "The silver lining is that David Reutimann won the race and he's a heck of a guy. So, that's good for him. But that's just racing. We got caught up in some stuff. We had a great race car."
Assuming Edwards starts the final three races, he has already clinched the title. But in a sport where people crash into walls at very high speeds, anything is possible. Therefore, to mathematically clinch the drivers title Edwards has to finish in 36th place or 38th if he leads at least one lap.
"You can't count on anything until it's done, Edwards added."We'll keep digging and head to Texas next week and do everything we can to get this team back into Victory Lane."
In April, Edwards finished third at TMS behind Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin.
While the driver's title has been essentially clinched, the owner's championship is a much tighter race, one that Edwards's No.60 Ford doesn't even lead.
A combination of drivers for the No.29 Richard Childress Racing team hold a 36-point edge on the No.20 Joe Gibbs Racing team and 42 points on Edwards' team.
Craftsman : Silverado 350K - Texas Motor Speedway - Fort Worth, Texas
The Nextel Cup races may get all the publicity, but the two-man race between Mike Skinner and Ron Hornaday Jr. has been every bit as exciting as the Jeff Gordon-Jimmie Johnson matchup. The two have been at each other almost the entire season.
Skinner has been either first or second in the standings since the second race in late February.
Hornaday Jr. and the Kevin Harvick Inc. team took a little longer to get it going and he took over second place in race number seven at Mansfield, OH. Since then he has been either first or second. For the past five races, the pair have exchanged the lead back in forth each week.
Last week was Hornaday Jr.'s turn to take the lead. Following a second-place finish at Atlanta on Saturday, Hornaday Jr. took a four-point lead over Skinner, who finished fifth.
A caution flag with 25 laps to go (Jack Sprague accident) set up the final stops and the run to the checkered flag. This time the No.33 KHI pit crew did the job and Hornaday Jr. beat everyone back onto the track.
Hornaday Jr. got a good restart, but the man on the move was Kyle Busch who charged through the field like a hot knife through butter. He was fourth with 18 laps to go and second with 16 laps remaining. Benson fought back and retook second, but Busch still held the inside lane and wasn't giving up.
A dozen laps to go and four trucks were left with a chance for the win - Hornaday Jr., Johnny Benson, Busch and Mark Martin. A caution flag on lap 118 when Chad McCumbee's truck left some fluid on the track to slow the race to a crawl.
They restarted on lap 122 and Busch charged to the lead building the margin to four lengths with six laps to go. He kept it going and flew to the checkered flag unchallenged the rest of the way. Skinner, who had to make an early unscheduled stop dropping him back to 17th place, fought back to get a top- five, but had to hand the points lead to his rival.
"We never did really get the truck fixed like we wanted it," said Skinner. "It was really, really good yesterday (during practice), but we struggled today."
"Kevin and DeLana Harvick have given us everything we need and more," said Hornaday Jr. after last Saturday's race. "The way we're going to beat him (Skinner) is just to race as hard as we can."
Now it's on to Texas where in June Skinner finished second and Hornaday Jr. fourth.
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