Reserve Jimmie Johnson's NASCAR Hall of Fame spot now

   Go ahead and carve out a spot in the NASCAR Hall of Fame right now for Jimmie Johnson.

   I know he isn’t eligible yet, but if he weren’t already ensured a spot after four consecutive championships, adding a fifth on Sunday should make him a no-brainer.

   He's now won five titles, four by amassing big points leads in the preceding nine races and now a fifth by coming from behind. If drivers had to write an essay to win the championship, he'd likely get bonus points for penmanship he is so smooth.

   For all of those fans who think Johnson winning five in a row is bad for racing, that's easy to say but not as easy in practice. Someone still has to beat Johnson to become champion. And in the face of likely his toughest competition to date, he still came out on top.

   It’s easy to say someone else should win. What's not east is apparently getting someone else to do it. You don't want to see Johnson or his team celebrating No. 6 next season? Then you better hope another finds a way to beat them.

   Unless NASCAR puts a cap on Cup championships for individual drivers - which some fans may actually think a good idea - I suspect Johnson and his team will be in title hunts for many years to come.

Did Jimmie Johnson get a free ride to a fifth consecutive championship?

   The last thing I would think either Denny Hamlin or Kevin Harvick would want to do would to give Jimmie Johnson any advantage going into the final race of the Sprint Cup season.

   Qualifying over the last few weeks hasn't really meant much on race day for any of the three drivers still in contention for the title. All three have qualified poorly of late but all three have ended up running in the top-10 during the race.

   But still, with everything on the line, with every point for Johnson another step toward a NASCAR-record fifth consecutive title, why wouldn't Hamlin or Harvick's teams try to at least keep pace with Johnson in qualifying?

   Everyone mentions how Hamlin won the Ford 400 a year ago from starting 38th. Two things come to mind. First, Hamlin was out of the title hunt last year and had nothing to lose. We have no idea if his team would or will make the same choices with more at stake.

   Second, in the past four title runs by Johnson, he has entered the Homestead finale with a big points lead and no reason to race hard or push it. Johnson's crew chief, Chad Knaus, admitted as much this week on a teleconference.

   The bottom line? We don't know how good Johnson can be here because we really have no idea how good he could have been in the past four races.

   So, now Johnson starts way up front (sixth). His competitors will start from the back (Harvick 28th and Hamlin 37th).

   Is it possible any of the three can still win the championship on Sunday? Of course.

   But there is no way I would want to start that process without at least being able to see the rear bumper of Johnson's No. 48 Chevrolet.

 

  

Will the next driver to "save" NASCAR come on down ...

   Here we go again.

   Another “popular” driver successful in some other form of motorsports decides to make a foray into NASCAR competition and suddenly that person is the answer to NASCAR’s attendance and TV ratings woes.

   This time, it’s Travis Pastrana, who has won numerous titles in supercross, motocross, freestyle motocross and rally racing. He plans to drive seven races in 2011 in the Nationwide Series with a team co-owned by himself and Michael Waltrip.

   Why is it when someone outside NASCAR decides to give it a try it necessarily most follow that we get a litany of reasons how that move will transform the sport?

   Haven’t we learned our lesson yet?

   IndyCar star Danica Patrick made her much-publicized debut in NASCAR this season with the same expectations (or more) and her performance on the track has been at best underwhelming.

   She likely got more people to tune in when she first arrived, and she likely sold a lot of T-shirts. That’s all well and good for Patrick, but what has it done for NASCAR?

   If people are tuning in to see Patrick and then tune out when her adventure is over, what has NASCAR gained?

   The same goes for Pastrana.

   He may be the “next big thing” to come to NASCAR, but unless he actually makes a mark in the sport competition-wise, I don’t know how that improves the NASCAR product.

   I have no doubt that if Patrick or Pastrana were to come into NASCAR and found the success – or even some of it – they have experienced in their other respective racing disciplines, NASCAR would benefit.

   But other sports’ stars coming over to “give NASCAR a try,” who aren’t in contention to win races or plan to run a schedule to contend for a championship, smacks as nothing more than a marketing ploy.

   That’s all well and good, too. Just please call it for what it is.

   I’m not going to make a judgment on what Pastrana can do for NASCAR until I actually see him compete in a Nationwide race.

   The honest truth is I don’t know what he will do. And neither does anyone else until he gets here.

Is Kevin Harvick being overlooked?

   Much has been written and said - even by Kevin Harvick himself - about whether he has been overlooked in this year's Sprint Cup championship race.

   Harvick's crew chief, Gil Martin was asked about this on Wednesday and here was his response:

   "I can't explain to you why he doesn't (get respect he deserves), but I can talk to you about why he should. I mean, you just go back and look. Again, I know it doesn't matter to nothing, but everybody talks about stats all week long. That's all you see all week long. When you go back and look where we would be in traditional points, where we are on top 10s, where we are on points gained, where we are on top 5s, I think if you go back and look, it's almost been one of the best seasons that RCR has ever had in its history.

   "Obviously if we don't win the championship, it's not going to be where we want to be, but it's a championship run that we've had all year long. And in order for that to have happened, he had to do a lot of things right this year, and I think a lot of those things have gone a little bit unnoticed because a lot of emphasis has been put on that we haven't qualified very well. But because we haven't qualified very well, the amount of cars that we've passed this year coming from I'll say not even mid-pack, three-quarter pack, through most of the season, I don't know the number of those cars, and I'm sure y'all have the stats on that, but the amount of cars that we've passed this season is probably astronomical compared to a lot of them.

   "And it's a shame that we had the little problem we did in the pits this weekend because I really think when we were running third and had to come back in, if we would have got to see some clean air, our car was going to be very fast out front or in the top two or three this weekend. But he's done a great job, and I think he deserves a lot more credit probably than he is getting."

   A couple things: First, I believe Harvick has as good a chance to win this title as either Jimmie Johnson or Denny Hamlin, given the circumstances with one race remaining.

   Second, given that, I don't think it's unreasonable to consider Harvick an upset winner should he do so.

   Harvick may have led the series points standings most of the first 26 weeks of the season but that feat in an off itself doesn't mean much - or anything - when it comes to the Chase. It's wins that matter, and that's how you get seeded to start the Chase. A driver can have a 1,000 point lead after 26 races but if he doesn't have a win, he'll start dead last in the Chase. That's the system.

   Given that, and the fact Johnson has won four straight championships and has a better than average shot at a fifth, Harvick is right where he should be: knocking on the door, with a chance to kick it in.

If my article ended now ...

   Sunday’s race proved once again why TV and other media’s use of the “points as they run now” statistic is completely and ridiculously meaningless.

   For virtually the entire race, Hamlin – since he was leading the race – was being praised for having dramatically increasing his points lead. Some in the media were already crowning him the champion.

   Then the final 15 laps played out, with Hamlin finishing 12th and Jimmie Johnson fifth. All of a sudden, Hamlin has a razor-thin 15-point advantage going into Homestead.

   That’s not quite the picture that had been portrayed for the whole race. The "as they run now" approach is touted as a way of keeping fans “informed,” but all it really does is continue to mislead.

    A championship bet?
   I don’t know if I have ever witnessed a more gutsy and daring pit call than the one made by Chad Knaus on Sunday. It was also very clever.
  
   Knaus waited until he was sure Hamlin and his team had decided they would have to pit for fuel. Then he immediately set about having his driver do exactly the opposite – stay on the track and slow down to save fuel.
  
   It was a season-defining moment for the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team.

   Consistency and chemistry
   There he is again. Joey Logano, who had scored the fourth-most points during the Chase entering Sunday’s race, finished third. It was his fifth consecutive top-10 finish.
  
   It is clear that Logano’s team is developing the consistency and chemistry needed to make the Chase in 2011.

Why can't Tony Stewart focus?

   You don't often hear NASCAR drivers admit their focus might be wandering as the season draws to a close, but Tony Stewart certainly offered an insightful answer this weekend when asked if it was difficult to keep focused when you are not in title hunt.

   Stewart's answer: "All everybody wants to do is talk about the guys that are in it and all we want to do is worry about the stuff that we are doing that didn’t get us in it and trying to make our cars better. You know that is the stuff that we are trying to work on and concentrate on our program and not worry about what everybody else is doing. And it is hard. 

   "You want to be in the middle of it and you want to be those guys that are there but at the same time when it doesn’t work out you have to sit there are trying to figure out things at the end of the year to try to figure out why you didn’t get yourself in that situation and you really work really hard now while they are still trying to fight for this year we are already fighting for next year now.”

   Stewart is certainly known for his candor, but it was still surprising to hear a prominent driver explain how he feels a little left out as the focus in the series turns to just those who still have a shot at the championship.

   It's actually more reality than perception, despite what some in NASCAR want to believe. If you're not in the Chase, you are barely noticed. Now as the season winds to close, if you are in the Chase but aren't a title contender, you do little better.

NASCAR does early inspection of title contenders' Homestead cars

   AVONDALE, Ariz. - NASCAR officials on Thursday confirmed they required the three Sprint Cup teams still in the hunt for the series championship to submit the cars they plan to run in the season finale to pre-race inspection.

 

   Earlier this week, the teams of Denny Hamlin, Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick were required to take the cars they plan to use next week at Homestead, Fla., to NASCAR's research and development center in Concord, N.C., for a precautionary inspection.

 

   Officials confirmed all three cars met template measurements.

 

   NASCAR received a lot of criticism when it levied harsh penalties on driver Clint Bowyer after his car failed inspection at the R&D center days after his win in the opening race of the Chase for the Cup at New Hampshire.

 

   With two races left in the Chase, Hamlin holds a 33-point lead over Johnson and a 59-point advantage over Harvick.

 

   Johnson has won the last four Cup titles.