Weekend That Was: Texas

It was less than a month ago when Jeff Gordon insisted that no matter what happened in the Chase for the Nextel Cup, this was his year.

Yeah, well, he's going to have to share it with Jimmie Johnson, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate.

Gordon's point after he won the Bank of America 500 at Lowe's Motor Speedway on Oct. 13 was legitimate. In a circuit of the calendar when he became a father for the first time and had so many other blessings bestowed on him, winning a fifth points championship, while obviously a high priority, was not going to make his year; nor was losing it after having it within his grasp most of 2007 going to break his year.

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But when Gordon repeated the statement then, it brought about knowing smiles and a few chuckles. What did Gordon have to worry about in the points race, after all?

Sure, there were still five races left in the Chase at the time. But his lead over Johnson was 68 points -- hardly insurmountable, yet still the largest advantage for a points leader leaving Charlotte in the short history of the Chase.

And there was all that momentum Gordon carried into the race the following week at Martinsville. Remember that?

It seems long ago now. With two races left in the Chase -- this Sunday at Phoenix International Raceway and the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway one week later -- it's now Johnson who is in the lead and controlling the motherlode of momentum.

Johnson's third consecutive victory in the Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday -- combined with Gordon's struggle to finish a respectable seventh -- allowed Johnson to jump 30 points ahead of Gordon in the Chase standings. Again, it's hardly insurmountable. It is, in fact, merely the difference between finishing first and fourth in a single race.

But with nine race victories to his credit now this season, it's time for folks to can the chatter about Gordon getting screwed by the system. He would have long ago locked up this title, they say, under the old points system. He's been the most consistent finisher all season, they'll whine.

Yeah, well, Johnson has won three more races. Even in the unlikely event that Gordon wins the next two -- which almost certainly would secure him the championship -- Johnson will still own the season's series-high victory total. And after all, wasn't one of the reasons for going to the Chase format, and then tweaking said format prior to this season, to place a higher emphasis on winning in a system that still penalizes more for poor finishes than it rewards good ones?

Johnson's late-season surge is on the verge of putting him in the record books with one of the finest seasons in the modern history of the sport. Only six times in the last 20 years has a driver won nine or more races in a season, and on four of those occasions the driver who did it won the championship.

That would be the late Dale Earnhardt in 1987 (11 wins) and in 1990 (nine), and Gordon in back-to-back seasons in 1997 (10 wins) and 1998 (13). The two times when a driver won nine or more times and failed to win the championship were Gordon in 1996 (when he won 10 and finished second in points to Terry Labonte, who won twice), and Rusty Wallace in 1993 (when he won 10 and finished second in points to Earnhardt, who won six times that year).

When you start throwing around names like Earnhardt, Wallace and, well, Gordon in connection with such lofty win totals, it's past time to give Johnson his due in the all-time big picture of stock-car racing. This guy already rates as one of the all-time greats.

And with nine wins this season and 32 now for his relatively brief six-year career as a full-time driver at the Cup level, it's scary to think that Johnson's best years might still be ahead of him. At 32 years of age to his more famous teammate's 36, Johnson might not even have to share some of them with Gordon.

This one, he will. But if Johnson drives well enough to hold off Gordon for the title over the last two races, he will have earned this championship in every respect. Gordon surely will be the first to admit it. Gordon's supporters should line up right behind him, too.

Angry truckers
You've gotta love the Craftsman Truck Series this season.

Just when Friday's Silverado 350K (what's up with that, by the way?) seemed to be shaping up as a two-man battle to the finish between points leaders Ron Hornaday and Mike Skinner, rookie Chad McCumbee shook it all up over the final five laps by playing a role in two wrecks that ultimately enabled Ted Musgrave to win, thereby breaking Musgrave's 66-race winless streak in the series (watch video).

Hornaday, who entered the race with a slim four-point lead over Skinner, was racing for the lead with Skinner on Lap 144 of the 149-lap event when McCumbee made it three-wide and all hell broke loose (watch video). McCumbee emerged from the scrape with the lead, but spun his tires upon the restart on the next-to-last lap and was hit from behind by Jack Sprague, giving Musgrave the victory.

Skinner rallied to finish third, giving him a 57-point lead over Hornaday, who faded to 18th, with two races remaining (complete standings).

Congrats to King Carl
He's taken numerous public-relations hits, and rightly so, for his in-your-face, on-camera bullying of Roush Fenway Racing teammate Matt Kenseth after the Cup race at Martinsville on Oct. 21. But driver Carl Edwards has apologized for that, and the resulting bad publicity should not take away from the fact that he clinched the Busch Series points championship Saturday in Texas (watch video).

Edwards has been the dominant player on the Busch scene all season and quickly ran up what proved to be an insurmountable lead of as much as 800 points early on. After finishing 11th in the O'Reilly Challenge at Texas Motor Speedway, Edwards leads his closest pursuer, David Reutimann, by an insurmountable 552 points with two races left (complete standings).

It makes you wonder, though. Did Kenseth send Edwards a congratulatory note? Or speak to him directly without being spoken to for the first time in six months? It's doubtful.

Thumbs up
To Kenseth and Johnson for the duel they put on down the stretch of the Dickies 500, battling back and forth for the lead (watch video). Kenseth did all he possibly could, and did it relatively cleanly, before the faster car won again. It was riveting stuff, about as good as anything that has transpired on the track all season (complete story).

Thumbs down
To the folks who made Johnson don a cowboy hat and a pair of six-shooters in Victory Lane. Puh-leaze don't do it again! It looked about as corny as anything that has transpired in NASCAR all season, and that includes some pretty bizarre stuff that occurs in media centers prior to events.

Pit Stops
• So Bruton Smith isn't saying anything about possibly working with NASCAR to move a race date to Las Vegas Motor Speedway by 2009. Surprised? You shouldn't be. Nor should you be surprised when that second date shows up during the Chase by that season, whether it comes at the expense of one of the dates at New Hampshire track Smith just purchased or not (complete story).

• Upon further review, it might make more sense for Smith to lobby NASCAR to move one of the two race dates from Atlanta Motor Speedway, where he is having trouble filling the grandstands, rather than New Hampshire, where there have been 26 consecutive sellouts. But what he surely would like to see much more than that is to have a race date moved from somewhere else -- as in sacrificed from one of the tracks he doesn't already own, like California Speedway. Good luck with that, as the ruling France family isn't likely to part with a date from a track owned by the International Speedway Corporation that it controls.

• True enough, it's all about winning races and no one has done that better or more often than Johnson this season. But Gordon has indeed been amazing with 28 top-10 finishes -- six more than Johnson and Tony Stewart, who with 22 each are the closest in the statistical category that best tracks consistency. In the eight Chase races to date, Gordon hasn't finished worse than 11th.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.