NASCAR BLOG

Despite accumulating 13 top-five finishes in 2008, soon to be hall of fame car racer Jeff Gordon was unable to claim a single 1st place finish during the Sprint Cup season. He’s sixth all-time with 81 victories and has won at least 2 races every season since 1994. He and many experts believe that this year was only a slump. A few small differences in many of those 13 finishes this year and he could have easily taken 1st place a few times. Learn more about Gordon and click here.

Clint Bowyer was able to hold off against the hard-pressing Carl Edwards and took home his first Nationwide Series championship trophy. It wasn’t a steady road, however, as Edwards made  a heavy push to overtake Bowyer in the last seven weeks of competition. At the beginning of those seven weeks, Bowyer held a 207 point lead that dropped to 21 points before the last race. It was a nerve-wracking experience for Bowyer, who said he can now finally breathe his sigh of relief.

The most well-known foregone conclusion in the sport came true this weekend.  In Homestead Florida, Jimmie Johnson won his 3rd straight Sprint Cup Championship. This has been fairly clear for several weeks now, as he racked up lots of points early in the season, but didn’t end up with really strong finishes down towards the end. I can’t blame him; if I had a big lead from the beginning, I would play it safe after that too, especially with a bunch of cars going 150 mph around me. In any event, he’s not happy with 3 in a row. One of the people in the team press conference said “You have to have 3 in a row before you can get 4 in a row.” So we should watch for him to be a big force in the next years as well. Congrats Jimmie!

For the first time in a NASCAR race, an environmentally friendly pace car will be competing this weekend at the Ford 400. Fans can expect quite a lot out of this little guy, including: pit stops where five men are needed to change out the 38 double A batteries that power the steering column, watching this hyrbid car drive along the inside of the track while a member of the pit crew varies the level of slack from the extension cord attached to the engine, and the possibility of seeing a car take 3 days to finish a race. Tune in to NASCAR and don’t miss out!

Jeff Gordon used to be at the top of the leaderboard almost every year. The problem is that he hasn’t been able to get a great final result in several years.  However, he has won at least one race every year so far, except for his rookie year… and this year.  This year he has been unable to hold his own all that great against Jimmy Johnson and the others.  Gordon has been in the sport since 1993, but he doesn’t seem to have it this year.  To be fair, a lot of racers are having trouble this year, but Jeff Gordon seems to have been completely off his game for much of the season. Next time around, he’ll surely do better, but he is clearly disappointed in the way things have gone.

While the Sprint Cup Series seems to be gonig to Johnson, the Craftsman Truck Series is not even close to being done. In the 14 years that the Craftsman Truck Series has been around, there has never been a lead as slim as this. Johnny Benson holds a nominal 6 point lead over second place Ron Hornaday. While it won’t be the decisive race of the season, the Lucad Oil 150 will go a long way to solidify the chances of either driver should they pull out the victory. NASCAR.com has the full race information you need.

Jimmie Johnson tried to keep his lead, and he did.  Of course, his lead is so big that there was practically no way that he could lose it.  In fact, there’s practically no way that he CAN lose it, even now.  Carl Edwards tried to play spoiler, not to be confused with a car’s spoiler, and he was able to win the race this weekend at the Dickies 500.  But he didn’t beat Jimmie Johnson enough to take the lead or anything.  Johnson seemed displeased, because his car was functioning badly but he expressed confidence that he would still take the Sprint Cup, for which there are only a race or two left.  Otherwise, the race ran just fine, with some teams taking big risks that you might not normally see. Take a look here.