Pro Racing Fans

Racing Message Boards

NASCAR Fatheads

NASCAR Merchandise

Pro Racing Tickets

NASCAR Credit Cards

Write About Racing

NASCAR Racing Teams

NASCAR Racing News

Racing Fan Sites

The Chase for The Kyle Busch/Jimmie Johnson/Carl Edwards Cup

I’m not going to insult anyone’s intelligence by saying that Kyle Busch is the favorite to win this year. You’ve heard it ad nauseum. At least you did until Carl Edwards pulled off a few wins and Jimmie Johnson did the same more recently.

The flavor-of-the-week philosophy going on in the Nascar media is insane. They flip-flop like no other coverage squad in professional sports. A few wise writers have been naming Jimmie Johnson from the get-go and continued to do so all the way through Busch’s dominant eight wins. Boris Said picked Carl Edwards months ago, although admittedly, he claimed it was just for the sake of being different.

A few worthy words of note when comparing Jimmie Johnson to Kyle Busch:

1. Kyle Busch is not as smart Jimmie Johnson. Although we’re talking about driving in Nascar specifically, Kyle Busch is probably not as smart as Jimmie Johnson on any front. Algebra notwithstanding. This will be a factor. The general aptitude given the circumstances, not the math.

2. Kyle Busch isn’t as experienced as Jimmie Johnson. It’s probably not a coincidence that the 48 group is coming on stronger after they became an official lock for the chase. Not that they don’t try their hardest every week, but real champions tend to free the beast within at more opportune times than other competitors.

3. Kyle Busch’s season is a New England Patriots sore thumb of meaninglessness on his career if he fails to win this championship. Jimmie Johnson’s season is another great season where he just fell short on the three-peat if he doesn’t win the championship. Although three-in-a-row is big, JJ is stress-proof. The big pressure is on the 18.

With all that said, here are each Chase participants prospects:

Kyle Busch - I believe he’ll come up short in second behind…

Jimmie Johnson - He has closed the gap and will seal the deal when a critical mishap occurs for the 18. Nascar fans will rejoice that Kyle didn’t win and probably won’t care that the other guy they didn’t want to did.

Carl Edwards - A third-place finish is the safe-bet, but I’m thinking unless he reels off a few mile-and-a-half wins, he’ll slip as far as fourth or fifth because of Talladega. The Roush guys really should’ve taken more notes from Mark Martin when it came to the restrictor plate stuff.

Clint Bowyer, Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton - I honestly believe they’ll round out the bottom of the Chase standings with Harvick, Burton and then Bowyer finishing 12th. RCR’s tribe is not a Nascar superpower. They collected two wins this season off of fourth-sixth place cars. They are tier 2 and they need a miracle to keep up with JGR, Hendrick and Roush.

Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle - Although Homestead is the exception, these guys have been just above average at all the tracks coming up. Not enough to compete for the Cup, although Biffle’s team has improved immensely.

Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin - I can see both sniffing the top five, but falling short of having it at Homestead. Tony Stewart’s entire Chase campaign rests on whether or not his desire to win--shown yet again when he lost at Richmond--is larger than the shattered chemistry his departure has created with his team.

Jeff Gordon - Will finish mid-pack and will be lucky to escape the season with a win.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. - Many an Earnhardt fan celebrated the consistency of this team earlier this year citing smart Chase-oriented driving. Not only does this not make sense as the best philosophy when the goal in this savvy format is to win as much as humanly possible, but now that theory has proven entirely incorrect. Earnhardt wasn’t running consistent because it was the smart thing to do. He was running consistent because his cars can’t get any better than third or fourth most weekends. He could easily score another win and call the season a moderate success, but it’s a huge stretch to say this team will win the championship this year.

> Pro Racing Fans gives fans a chance to buy NASCAR apparel and NASCAR Fathead posters available online.

10% - Chances Darrell Waltrip wasn’t just pushing for television ratings and actually believed that Dale Jr. could win nearly a half dozen races this year. Waltrip said before the season started that Jr. would be rolling in wins. Hendrick Motorsports hasn’t even won a half dozen. Jr.’s 88 team was a team in its first year and historically, regardless of the driver, only the 48 and 24 teams at Hendrick--with the exception of Terry Labonte’s 5 before the 48’s time--have done extremely well. Why that would change just because the most popular driver gets a seat I have no idea. Also, put an asterisk on this entire bit due to the dubious single win Jr. collected. Had Jr. been in second at Michigan and someone else passed the pace car under caution in front of him, the proverbial door would slam violently rather than swinging both ways.

95% - Chances Dodge’s Nascar days are numbered. They’re the only manufacturer with no one in the Chase and aside from Ryan Newman and Kasey Kahne’s wins at marquee events--both of them at the misfortune of Tony Stewart--the Dodge camp did nothing this year. Zip. They pulled out of the truck series and it’s only a matter of time until even more rams on hoods turn into something else. Penske, Ganassi, GEM: you have your scapegoat.

100% - Chances Rusty Wallace’s dust-up with Ryan Newman in the media last month was about Wallace’s average performance during the years his teammate Newman was excelling and not about Newman being fired. Not that it was Wallace’s place to open his mouth anyway since he had nothing to do with the situation--he retired on “top of his game*” in 2005--but even so, he publicly humiliated himself. Wallace is a self-parodying egotistical talking head who has spent all of his time in the ESPN booth memorizing and flaunting his own career statistics rather than saying anything insightful or interesting. Dale Jarrett: teach this kid.

*-Wallace had no wins in his final season, much like many of the years before it. In the late 80s he won a championship and from 1993-1996 he won 25 races. No one knows more about their own stats than Rusty Wallace, so clearly the annoying repeated “top of my game” quote he threw out was a coping mechanism for his retirement.