2007 Nextel Cup Year in Review

Jimmie Johnson won four consecutive races in the “Chase,” tying a record that has stood since 1972.

By Steve Schwarz, Motorsports Editor

Unless you were a Jimmie Johnson or Jeff Gordon fan, the 2007 Nextel Cup season was not a very exciting one. The two Hendrick Motorsports stars dominated 2007 as few have throughout NASCAR’s long history.

As a group, the four HMS drivers (Johnson, Gordon, Kyle Busch, Casey Mears) won 18 of 36 races, collected 84 top-10s and earned a not-so-paltry $24,420,344. The 18 wins are more than the 15 wins Roush Fenway Racing put up in 2005 when it controlled the series and is the most for one team since Richard Petty (21) and Buddy Baker(1) combined for 22 wins driving for Petty Enterprises in 1971.

The No.48 Lowe’s Chevrolet team led the way with 10 wins, four poles, 20 top- fives and 24 top-10s. It was the most wins in a season since Gordon’s 1998 championship season, when he made 13 trips to Victory Lane. Johnson also won four consecutive races in the “Chase,” tying a record that has stood since the “Modern Era” began in 1972. He might have won a record fifth straight, but he was more concerned with clinching the title at Homestead and didn’t go for the win.

“We would have loved to have won our fifth in a row, but the big prize was the Championship,” said Johnson in the post-race press conference.

Johnson, who has made the “Chase” in all four seasons that NASCAR has used the newer format, has been even better in the “playoffs” than the regular season. Over the last four years, Johnson has 27 wins in 144 starts (18.75%). But in the 10-race “Chase” at the end of the season, the No.48 team has been spectacular. In 40 “Chase” races, Johnson has amassed 11 wins, 20 top-fives and 28 top-10s. That means when the title is on the line, Johnson wins slightly more than 25% of the time and comes home with at least a top-five finish half the time.

In this year’s “Chase for the Nextel Cup,” Johnson scored more points in nine races than anyone has ever scored in 10 “Chase” events. He set a new standard, earning 1,663 points and winning the title by the widest margin in four years despite the fact that Gordon’s average finish was a stunning 5.1 and he posted nine top-10s.

For the entire season, four-time Nextel Cup champion Gordon collected six wins and an amazing 30 top-10s in 36 starts.

While Hendrick Motorsports grabbed all the glory and most of the headlines, there were some interesting things going on over the last 10 months that didn’t get as much notice.

Clint Bowyer and Martin Truex Jr. became forces to be reckoned with for both 2007 and beyond. In addition, Juan Pablo Montoya showed flashes of brilliance that bodes well for his future in NASCAR.

Bowyer started out the season as the third driver on the Richard Childress Racing team behind his more well-known teammates Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton. But Bowyer proved to be the most consistent of the three RCR drivers and when the “Chase for the Nextel Cup” began in September he opened the 10- race campaign with his first career victory. He was solid throughout the “Chase” and finished third overall only behind the magnificent years put up by Johnson and Gordon.

Montoya, who spent his entire career driving open-wheel vehicles, looked like the “real deal” behind the wheel of a “Cup” car. With so little experience, Montoya still managed to finish 20th overall, including a dramatic win at the Infineon Raceway. His immediate success has led to a number of open-wheel drivers (2007 IndyCar Series champion Dario Franchitti, three-time IndyCar Series champion Sam Hornish Jr., 1997 Formula One World Champion Jacques Villeneuve and Patrick Carpentier) to make the jump into Nextel Cup.

While finishing a disappointing 11th in the 12-man “Chase,” Truex Jr. became the No.1 driver at Dale Earnhardt Inc. The pressure to perform on Truex Jr., the 27-year-old from Mayetta, NJ, will be overwhelming, but to date he has shown he can handle driving the flagship for the rebuilding DEI team.

Which brings us to the most significant off-the-track happening in NASCAR in many years. Fan favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. deciding to leave the company his father built and jump to the series’ most powerful operation - Hendrick Motorsports beginning in 2008.

Voted the most popular driver in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006, Earnhardt Jr. became increasingly frustrated driving the No.8 Budweiser Chevrolet. Though he managed to win at least one race per year since becoming a full-time “Cup” driver in 2000, it was obvious that he was fighting an uphill battle against the likes of Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, Penske Racing and Roush Fenway Racing with inferior equipment.

In 2007, the No.8 DEI Chevy had six races end prematurely because of engine failure. He tried to work out a deal with stepmom Teresa Earnhardt that would leave him in control of the operations, but the two couldn’t come to an agreement. So Earnhardt Jr. chose his only other alternative - to leave the team.

Engine failures probably won’t be a big problem at HMS, but what might be a problem for Earnhardt Jr. is being the third best driver on his new team.

“Junior” has always been the star of the team and now he goes to a team which already dominated the series and has the two-time defending champion along with one of the greatest drivers all-time. It will be interesting to watch how the three drivers interact throughout the ups and downs of the marathon 10- month season.

With all the wins and notoriety that Hendrick drew, there were bound to be teams that faltered under the pressure. Earnhardt Jr. was one, but so were the years posted by Kasey Kahne, J.J. Yeley and all of Toyota.

Kahne was on every preseason list as the driver most likely to take a giant leap forward and compete for the championship. He was the 2004 Raybestos Rookie of the Year. He had won a series-high six times in 2006 along with 19 top-10s. But in 2007 Kahne, the No.9 Dodge team and really all of Evernham Motorsport struggled right from the beginning. After a respectable seventh- place finish at Daytona, consecutive finishes of 38th at California, 35th at Las Vegas and 39th at Atlanta pretty much ended Kahne’s season before Memorial Day.

Yeley was the third driver on a very strong Joe Gibbs Racing team with two- time Nextel Cup champion Tony Stewart and rising start Denny Hamlin. But unlike the way Bowyer came into his own as the No.3 driver on a three-man team, Yeley could never get his team even close to that level of his teammates. He finished the year with just one top-five and only three top-10s while starting all 36 races. Kyle Busch will take over for Yeley in 2008.

When Toyota first came to NASCAR, in the Craftsman Truck Series, they were very quickly competitive. Travis Kvapil won their first race in 2004, its first season and in 2006 Todd Bodine won the Championship in a Toyota.

But Toyota’s first year in Nextel Cup racing can only be described as dismal.

While Chevrolet was setting a team record with 26 wins, Toyota’s best finish all year was a third-place result by Dave Blaney in race No.30 at Talladega.

The fact of the matter was that for most of the season it was a struggle for Toyota drivers, other than Blaney, to simply make the race, much less compete with the “Big Boys” for a win. While Blaney started 33 of 36 races, other drivers were not even up to his level. David Reutimann made 26 starts, Dale Jarrett - 24, Brian Vickers - 23, A.J. Allmendinger - 17 and Michael Waltrip just 14 starts.

In addition, Waltrip began the season by getting into trouble with NASCAR officials at Daytona over a “jet-fuel like” substance in the intake manifold. He was given a 100-point penalty and it took the two-time Daytona 500 winner more than two months to get back into the positive numbers.

The good news for Toyota is that they improved as the season went along and should be more competitive in 2008. And they added Joe Gibbs Racing to the stable which means with the addition of Stewart and Hamlin they automatically become a better squad.

“Having Gibbs, an established top-caliber team come aboard does, to a certain extent, legitimize Toyota,” said Vickers, who led Toyota drivers with five top-10s for Red Bull Racing.

“I feel pretty good about next year,” said team president J.D. Gibbs. “It’s going to be a while to get where you want to be. But I would be disappointed if we’re not at least where we are now.”

However, the bad news for everybody involved in the 2008 Sprint Cup (formerly known as Nextel Cup), is that Hendrick Motorsports will probably be just as good if not better in 2008 than it was in 2007.

“As each year goes by, and the core of the team stays together, we’re able to make it stronger and stronger, and better and better,” said Johnson.

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