Johnson and Hendrick deserve all the praise

Hendrick Motorsports dominated the 2007 Nextel Cup racing season.

Driver Jimmie Johnson, crew chief Chad Knaus, the whole No.48 Chevrolet team and all of Hendrick Motorsports had a year that very few of us will ever equal in whatever our line of work might be.

In a sport designed to have a level playing field, so that fans can root for their favorite driver knowing they have a fair chance to win a race, Hendrick Motorsports and Johnson apparently didn’t get the notice.

Johnson, along with teammates Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch and Casey Mears, dominated the 2007 Nextel Cup racing season. As a group, the four drivers won 18 of 36 races, collected 84 top-10s and earned a not-so-paltry $24,420,344.

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 more than 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.

“It’s hard to do much more than we did,” said Gordon. “That just shows you how awesome those guys were.”

Johnson has finished in the top-10 of the final standings in each of his six full-time seasons in Nextel Cup Series, including back-to-back runner-up showings in 2003 and 2004. He finished fifth in his other two full-time seasons.

Three of Hendrick Motorsports’ drivers (Johnson, Gordon and Busch) made the 12-man “Chase for the Nextel Cup,” and owner Rick Hendrick won his seventh Nextel Cup championship (Gordon - 4, Johnson - 2, Terry Labonte - 1). That number is second all-time to the nine won by Petty Enterprises. But Petty hasn’t won since 1979, and its prospects don’t look good for them getting No.10 anytime soon.

It will likely get worse for the Nextel Cup competition in 2008 before it gets better.

The “New York Yankees” of NASCAR, Hendrick Motorsports added Dale Earnhardt Jr. to it’s stable while jettisoning the sometimes-divisive Busch.

“Junior,” easily the most popular driver in the sport, brings 17 career wins to the team. He knows how to win championships, having won Busch Series titles in 1998 and 1999. Until this past season, he had won at least one race in every season since becoming a full-time driver in 2000 for DEI.

But Earnhardt Jr. and the No.8 Budweiser team fell on hard times in 2007, and “Junior” had problems off-track with owner and stepmom Teresa Earnhardt. So he jumped ship and made a cushy landing with the best team in the sport.

Now Earnhardt Jr. will have the best equipment in the business. He might just join Gordon and Johnson as the best in Nextel Cup, meaning Hendrick Motorsports, who manhandled the competition in 2007, might be even better next year.

“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.

Hendrick Motorsports and Johnson better in 2008?

That should give the competition nightmares all off-season.

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