By Bill Marx
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service
(October 27, 2009)
After two consecutive wins, Jimmie Johnson came up short and finished … second. Superman now leads the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup by 118 points heading into Talladega. Johnson is four races from his fourth straight Cup championship. Here’s the breakdown of the top 12 after Sunday’s race at Martinsville Speedway.
1. Jimmie Johnson, 6,098. Only a four-tire call at Kansas—when most of the other cars in the top 10 took two—has kept Johnson from having top-five finishes in each of the first six Chase races. Instead, that ninth-place day has dragged down his average finish in the Chase to 3.0. Horrors!
2. Mark Martin, 5,980. Martin finished eighth Sunday to get back on the top-10 train after his disappointing 17th-place finish the week before at Lowe’s. To pass Johnson, Martin must average 29.5 points better than Johnson over the final four races.
3. Jeff Gordon, 5,948. Gordon finished fifth for his fourth straight top five. Now he needs to draw on his history at Talladega—six wins, second only to Dale Earnhardt’s 10—to try and make a run at Johnson.
4. Tony Stewart, 5,906. Stewart wasn’t a factor Sunday although he finished ninth for his 22nd top 10 of the season. If Stewart closes out the season with top 10s in the final four races, he’ll set a personal season best.
5. Juan Montoya, 5,898. Montoya continues to shine and entertain. He finished third for his fifth top five of the Chase and traded enough paint and barbs with Jeff Gordon to justify the price of admission right there. I can’t wait until 2010.
6. Kurt Busch, 5,858. Busch finished 17th, leaving him four races to attain personal highs in top fives and top 10s. Busch has eight top 10s; his record is 12 in 2002. He has 18 top 10s; his record is 21, set in 2004, when he won his only Cup championship.
7. Ryan Newman, 5,786. Newman is still looking for his first win of the season, but his seventh-place finish lowered his average finish for the year to 13.7. His previous best is 13.9 in 2003, the best season of his career when he won eight races.
8. Greg Biffle, 5,748. Like Newman, Biffle is winless. Unlike Newman, he has a streak on the line. He has won at least one race in each of the past six seasons. He is winless at Talladega and Phoenix, but has one win at Texas and three at Homestead.
9. Denny Hamlin, 5,746. Any time Virginia-born Hamlin wins at Richmond or Martinsville, it’s a big deal. His win Sunday gave him three for the season, including two in Virginia—he won at Richmond last month. If you are keeping score at home, Hamlin has three wins in the state of Virginia, three at Pocono and one at New Hampshire.
10. Carl Edwards, 5,685. Chase or no Chase, unless Edwards wins a race this year, 2009 will go down as the worst—and most frustrating—season of his career. Edwards failed to lead a lap for the 21st race this season. Last season he led laps in 21 races. How much of a nonfactor has Edwards become? Since leading a season-best 103 laps at Pocono on June 7, Edwards has led five laps.
11. Kasey Kahne, 5,659. Kahne’s feast or famine Chase continued Sunday with a 32nd-place finish. That gave him three finishes of 32nd or worse to go with three finishes of eighth or better.
12. Brian Vickers, 5,568. Vickers finished 11th to match his previous best effort in the Chase at New Hampshire. Coming off finishes of 37th, 29th and 34th, the 11th-place run was a huge positive heading into Talladega, site of his first Cup victory in 2006.
