Not what NASCAR wanted, but this '07 Chase is over

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- It's over.

The concession speech has been made and the final ballots don't even need to be counted.

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It may not be the way NASCAR wanted it heading into the final race weekend of the season, but the Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Miami, Fla., was reduced to an afterthought following Sunday's Checker Auto Parts 500 at Phoenix International Raceway. The Chase for the Nextel Cup is finished before the final race has started.

With Jimmie Johnson winning for the fourth consecutive week and for the series-high 10th time this season, and with his closest friend and closest pursuer, Jeff Gordon, struggling to a 10th-place finish that leaves him 86 points behind heading into Homestead, the outcome is obvious.

Gordon, who led the points race most of the 36-race season only to see it slip away under Johnson's barrage of wins at the end, admitted as much after Sunday's race.

"It's over," Gordon said. "Even if they have trouble and we still win it and we accept the check and the trophy, that's not the way you want to win a championship. We've gotten beat, bottom line. They've done the job to deserve to be champions, and we haven't.

"It's unfortunate. And right now I'm just frustrated with the way we're running, when we've run well all year long and had gotten ourselves in a great position -- and it just hasn't worked out for us. You go into it trying to figure out if it's your year and if you've got what it takes. I really thought we did, but it just wasn't meant to be this year."

Hold the champagne

Johnson wasn't so quick to accept Gordon's concession speech. But even as the words tumbled from his mouth, one got the idea that he was only being polite.

"With the lead that we have, it's a nice comfortable position to be in," Johnson said. "But we've got to go down there and run 400 miles. That's the bottom line. If we don't run the full distance of the race, we're in trouble. That takes some pressure off; it certainly does.

"But we're going go down there and try to keep it simple, like we've done to this point. We're just going to go out there and run the race and do our thing. I just heard that no one has won five in a row [in a long time], so let's go try to get that."

Why not? Everything Johnson goes for these days seems to turn golden, helping him transform what was a sizeable 68-point deficit to Gordon one month ago into an advantage that now looms as the largest for a leader heading into the final race in the short history of the Chase.

Johnson must finish 18th or better to clinch the championship, no matter what Gordon does. If he leads one lap, it only needs to be 19th or better -- and if he leads the most laps like he says he intends to do, he could still falter at the end, finish at least 21st and still walk away with the season's greatest prize for the second year in a row. (Continued)