For anyone watching Jimmie Johnson and the #48 team celebrate in Victory Lane at Phoenix, it looked a lot like a team celebrating a championship.
Everyone got soaked with Gatorade and took longer than usual to settle down. If the #48 knows it, then it’s really over.
Sure, Johnson has to avoid trouble and finish 36th or better but it’s basically academic at this point. No Chase driver has lost the point lead entering Homestead, and a 141 point lead should be enough for Johnson’s three-peat (copyright Pat Riley).
Maybe he could blow an engine on lap one, but do you really think that he won’t get the most reliable engine Hendrick Motorsports could possibly build? Even if things became dire, HMS will have three or possibly four other cars in the race that could be sacrificed if Johnson needed to pick up spots at the end of the race.
Carl Edwards can stay positive, charge hard and zzzzzz…It’s over.
Jimmie Johnson is the sport’s best driver on the best team and deserves his third straight championship.
For all of the talk about changes to the Chase format or complaints about Johnson making the show boring, it’s not Johnson’s fault. He goes for wins and races aggressively, but his only problem is that he’s too successful. He’s got some nerve racing for wins, and actually winning. In the last three Chases, he has eight wins and 15 top 2 finishes. If someone wants to complain about the Chase, how about finding fault with other teams or drivers before pointing the finger at Johnson and the #48 team?
Other Thoughts and Notes
- Switching away one of NASCAR’s most important races of the season for America’s Funniest Home Videos? What kind of a joke is that? I hope everyone on the East Coast has ESPN2 and that no one was recording the race to watch later. I guarantee you that ABC/ESPN would move the NFL, NBA or college football to another channel in favor of primetime programming. That is was America’s Funniest Home Videos is straight up appalling.
- Johnson is now in 15th place on the all time wins list. He has 40 wins in only seven years.
- How does AJ Allmendinger not have a job for 2009? In four mop-up races for Gillet-Evernham, he has finished 15th, 14th, 26th, and 16th. That’s better than GEM’s other high-profile drivers Kasey Kahne and Elliott Sadler. It’s also immensely better than GEM’s 2009 driver Reed Sorenson.
- Speaking of Sorenson, did anyone else notice the Amp logos on the rear quarterpanels? How does that work? Did the accountants at Amp discovered they had $65 left in the sponsorship budget after their commitments to the #88 with the hope that Sorenson would wreck? Well, Sorenson did wreck and finished in the 30′s for the 19th time this year. I don’t care how bad Ganassi cars are, I thought Sorenson was more talented than that.
- What was crazier, David Gilliland winding up on the hood of Scott Speed’s car, or Speed’s fragmented post-wreck explanation?
- Jamie McMurray is ending the season on a nice note with back to back 3rd place runs. I’m sure someone will point to it and say how he’s finally figuring things out and will build momentum for next season. Before you believe that, look at his stats for the last four years and you’ll see almost identical numbers.
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