Sporting News announces NASCAR award winners

The most dominant driver and team owner of 2007 head the list of winners of the annual Sporting News NASCAR awards.

Nextel Cup champion Jimmie Johnson on Tuesday was named Sporting News Driver of the Year, and Rick Hendrick, whose drivers won 18 of 36 Nextel Cup races, was named Owner of the Year.

The winners were selected by writers and editors of Sporting News.

Johnson won 10 races en route to his second consecutive Nextel Cup championship and edged out Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon for the award. Gordon won six races and finished second in the Chase for the NASCAR Nextel Cup.

Pat Tryson was named Crew Chief of the Year, and Juan Montoya won Rookie of the Year. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is the recipient of the Dale Earnhardt Tough Driver Award.

Driver of the year: Jimmie Johnson

Johnson's performance in the final five races of the Chase for the Nextel Cup was about as emphatic a statement as a driver can make -- four consecutive wins and a title-clinching seventh place in the final event at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Entering those five races, Johnson trailed Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon by 68 points -- but wound up beating him by 77.

The way Johnson rallied to claim his second consecutive championship spoke to his willingness to push the No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet to the edge of its capabilities. Emblematic of his title run was a side-by-side battle with Matt Kenseth at Texas in the eighth Chase race. Where another driver might have backed off and settled for second place to protect his position in the standings, Johnson risked calamity to claim the win.

A week later at Phoenix -- where Gordon had visited Victory Lane earlier in the season -- Johnson won again, and his teammate threw in the towel.

Johnson is the first driver since Gordon in 1997-98 to win consecutive Cup titles, and with 10 victories, he is the first double-digit winner in the series since Gordon won 13 races in 1998.

Owner of the year: Rick Hendrick

Talk about a no-brainer. Not only did Hendrick have the top two drivers on the circuit for most of the season, he also facilitated the cooperation between Gordon's and Johnson's teams, a collaboration that made both outfits better.

Hendrick won his seventh championship in 2007, leaving him only three behind Petty Enterprises on the all-time list. Hendrick cars won 18 of the 36 Cup races. Hendrick encouraged extensive offseason testing, and his teams parlayed that research and development into wins in the first five COT races.

There was another prize that went to Hendrick this year, one whose real value has yet to be realized. He enticed Dale Earnhardt Jr. to drive for his organization, thereby increasing both the firepower and marketability of the company.

Crew chief of the year: Pat Tryson

It's hard to overlook Chad Knaus, an inseparable part of Johnson's championship equation. It's equally difficult to pass over Gil Martin, who helped Cup Series second-year star Clint Bowyer to his first win and a third-place finish in the Chase.

The real difference-maker on the pit box, however, was Tryson, who took over as crew chief for Kurt Busch's No. 2 Penske Dodge before the road course event at Infineon Raceway in late June. Before the change, Busch had been foundering. Four consecutive finishes outside the top 15, along with a 100-point penalty for a pit road incident with Tony Stewart at Dover, had dropped the 2004 champ to 16th in points.

Two weeks after the Infineon race, Busch finished third in the Pepsi 400 at Daytona. August brought victories at Pocono and Michigan, and Busch qualified for the Chase and finished seventh in the final standings.

Tryson's know-how, and his calming influence, had a lot to do with their success.

Rookie of the year: Juan Montoya

Though David Ragan showed vast improvement during a solid rookie season, Montoya dominated the rookie class in his first full year of Cup racing. The Colombian superstar, a former Indianapolis 500 winner and Formula One driver, adapted quickly and finished fifth at Atlanta Motor Speedway in his fourth Cup start of the season.

Montoya quickly demonstrated that his reputation as a hard charger was well-earned. In March, he won the Busch Series road race in Mexico City with a late-race bump-and-run on teammate Scott Pruett. In June, he won his first Cup race on the road course at Infineon. In his return to Indianapolis in July, Montoya qualified second and finished second to Tony Stewart.

Dale Earnhardt Tough Driver Award: Dale Earnhardt Jr.

No driver dealt with as much adversity, on and off the track, as Earnhardt experienced in 2007, but he weathered it all with class and grace.

In May, Earnhardt made what he called the most difficult decision of his life when he resolved to leave Dale Earnhardt Inc., the organization his late father founded. A month later, with considerable fanfare, he announced he would drive for Hendrick Motorsports in 2008 and beyond.

Six engine failures kept him out of the Chase, and he failed to win a race for the first time in his eight seasons. In the closing stages of the October race at Atlanta, Earnhardt suffered one of the hardest hits of his career when he slammed into the Turn 1 wall, but the next day -- still a bit shaky from the impact -- he tested the COT for Hendrick and fielded questions from reporters.

Makes you think of someone else named Earnhardt.