THINKS THE EAGLES STOLE ONE
WELCOME TO NASCAR's Nightmare.
Just halfway through the 10-race Chase for the Championship, Jimmie Johnson appears to have his fourth consecutive championship locked up. Drama, exit stage right. The Chase is over.
By winning his second consecutive race Saturday night, Johnson has extended his lead over Mark Martin to 90 points. That's not an insurmountable margin for Martin to make up in five races.
The problem for Martin and perhaps Jeff Gordon, 135 points off the lead, is that Johnson and his No. 48 Chevrolet team rarely blunder. A bad finish for Johnson is any place out of the top 10.
Asked on a Tuesday conference call whether anyone can topple Johnson, Chaser Denny Hamlin (11th in points) replied: "I don't think so. If he was 150 points behind right now, I'd still say he would be the guy to beat. They can step it up when they need to. They were running lap times at the end of the Charlotte race that were near qualifying times. They just have a little bit extra in the tank, it seems, when they need it.
"I saw that he hasn't finished out of the top 15 in 31 or 33 Chase races in a row. That's just hard to beat."
Martinsville, the site of Sunday's race, is one of Johnson's best tracks. His victory in the spring race at the historic Virginia speedway gives him five wins in the last six races there. We are talking domination, race fans.
At the Chase midway mark last year Johnson led Jeff Burton by 69 points. A week later, after winning at Martinsville, Johnson was 149 points ahead of Greg Biffle. Johnson's final margin over Carl Edwards was 69 points.
Rating Johnson as a racer, Hamlin said: "I don't want to sound disrespectful to Jimmie, because he is one of the best of our sport, not just in our era but in past eras. But it's not that Jimmie's that much better than these drivers out here, especially Jeff Gordon [and] Tony Stewart.
"He's just got every little thing working for him. He's got a great crew chief in Chad [Knaus]. He's got great race cars [and] a tremendous amount of horsepower.
"Our cars don't accelerate off the corner like his, [and] they don't get into the corner like his. And that is what makes the difference.
"He obviously does a good job of not making mistakes. That's where I'd put him above everyone."
Hamlin enjoyed an excellent start to this year's Chase, finishing second at New Hampshire. Following another good finish, fifth at Kansas in the third Chase race, Hamlin was sixth in points. However, in the last two races he has finished 37th and 42nd, respectively.
His goal the remainder of the Chase is to win at least one race, finish in the top five in points and then meet with Joe Gibbs Racing staff and teammates Kyle Busch and Joey Logano to figure out how to stop Johnson from extending his championship streak to five in 2010.
"You don't want to get caught up in the outside lane," Busch said. "With all the lead lap cars going at it double-file on the restarts, the outside lane will be a no-man's land. You'll be forced to root and gouge and do whatever it takes to get back down on the inside."
Said Tryson: "It's going to be a big mess. It may be the most controversial race of the year."
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