Cup Numbers: Homestead

As By the Numbers heads toward the ol' Homestead in 2007, the season finale has us locked in on four drivers: one who is about to celebrate a second Nextel Cup championship; one who can become the first driver to have 30 top-10s in a season since NASCAR expanded the current schedule to 36 races in 2001; one who has been ushered in and out of Victory Lane at Homestead-Miami Speedway for a mini, pre-Chase celebration three consecutive years; and one who has one last chance to keep a streak intact in the final race he will make for his legendary father's team.

• Jimmie Johnson: The magic number for the reigning champ to successfully defend his title is 18. A top-18 finish secures another trophy for Johnson and the 48 team. Johnson has finished worse than 18th seven times this season, the last coming in August at Bristol.

Since, Johnson has won six of his season- and career-high 10 races and shows no signs of slowing down with four consecutive victories a testament to his unwillingness to settle for anything less despite the ramifications that lie ahead if something would go wrong.

A win Sunday in the Ford 400 would make Johnson the first Cup champion to win the season finale in the Chase era. He would also become the first driver in the Modern Era to win five races in a row and just the third in the history of NASCAR: Bobby Allison and Richard Petty each accomplished the feat in 1971; Petty (1967) is the only driver to do it twice.

Johnson has finished worse than 18th at Homestead twice in six races including a crash in 2005 that ended his hopes of catching points leader Tony Stewart and dropped him from second to fifth in the final standings. But that seems like a forever ago for Johnson, who finished ninth there last year and has a 14.5 average finish at HMS.

• Jeff Gordon: About the only way for Gordon to beat Johnson for the Cup is for someone to steal the keys of the 48; and these cars, of course, don't have keys. The 86-point deficit Gordon faces in the largest heading into the final race of the Chase era.

Gordon, as you probably are already aware, has "out-pointed" Johnson by more than 86 points on four occasions this season.

Gordon is having his best year since that unbelievable season of 1998, when he won 13 times and finished with 26 top-fives in 33 races. Only five times did he fail to finish with a top-10.

In 2007, simply amassing top-10s isn't enough. He has six more than the next closest drivers, Johnson and Stewart. But Johnson has as many top-fives (20) and four more victories than does Gordon. Gordon has an 11.5 average finish at Homestead with six top-10s in eight starts. This year, it appears, that just isn't enough.

• Greg Biffle: As the winner of the past three races at Homestead, Biffle has been the Chase appetizer to the main course celebrations of first Kurt Busch (2004), then Stewart (2005) and finally Johnson (2006).

Biffle and Stewart, who won the first two races at HMS in 1999 and 2000, are the only multiple winners there. Biffle's three wins at HMS are his most at any one track and account for one-fourth of his 12 career victories.

Biffle's average finish at Homestead, however, is 12.6 thanks to finishes of 25 and 35 (crash) in his first two starts there.

• Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Never has Earnhardt raced a full season, beginning in 2000, without winning at least once. He's one race away from that being the case in 2007 in his final start in the No. 8 car of Dale Earnhardt Inc.

Junior's last season at DEI came up short of the Chase and in fact he has more DNFs (nine) than top-fives (seven).

It doesn't look promising at Homestead, either. Earnhardt doesn't have a top-10 in seven career starts there and his best finish (13th) came in his first race in 2000. He did lead 47 laps last year but finished 19th for the second consecutive race there. His average finish there is 19.1.

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