Busch, Edwards, Johnson highlight 2008 Cup season (cont'd)

As far as the championship went, however, there was no question.

"We got beat by a great champion," Edwards said after the final race.

• Ryan Newman won the season-opening Daytona 500, his first career restrictor-plate victory. Teammate Kurt Busch finished second, giving car owner Roger Penske his first restrictor-plate victory and first 1-2 finish in 25 years of Cup racing.

• Carl Edwards won back-to-back races at Fontana and Las Vegas -- the second time in his career he has posted consecutive wins.

• Kyle Busch won at Atlanta, the first victory in the Cup Series for Toyota. The victory came in the 40th start for Toyota in NASCAR's premier series and was the first by a foreign-based manufacturer since Jaguar won with Al Keller at Linden (N.J.) Airport in 1954.

• Jeff Burton won at Bristol and was followed across the line by teammates Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer, giving car owner Richard Childress his first-ever 1-2-3 sweep.

• Carl Edwards won at Texas to join Jeff Burton as the only drivers with multiple victories at Texas.

• Kyle Busch won at Darlington and became the youngest race winner there.

• Kasey Kahne followed up his win in the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race with a victory in the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway. He became the sixth driver to win both races in the same season.

• Dale Earnhardt Jr. won at Michigan, ending a 76-race winless streak.

• Kyle Busch won at Infineon Raceway, scoring his first career Cup Series road-course victory and giving him wins on all four types of tracks in NASCAR's premier circuit.

• At Chicagoland, Kyle Busch won back-to-back races for the first time in his career, extending his collection of checkered flags in 2008 to seven. It was the fourth consecutive win for the busch brothers -- Kyle at Infineon and Kurt at New Hampshire -- the fourth time that brothers had won four in a row.

• At Indianapolis, Jimmie Johnson won his second race of 2008 -- his second win at the Brickyard.

• Kyle Busch won at Watkins Glen, completing a sweep of the two road-course races this season.

• Carl Edwards completed the second Cup-Nationwide series weekend sweep of the season with his victory at Michigan.

• Carl Edwards posted back-to-back victories for the second time in 2008 when he won at Bristol.

• Jimmie Johnson dominated the field at Fontana, scoring a perfect Driver Rating of 150.0 to post his third victory.

• With his back-to-back wins at New Hampshire and Dover to open the Chase, Greg Biffle became the first driver to win the first two Chase races.

• Greg Biffle won at Dover, posting consecutive series wins for the first time in his career.

Jimmie Johnson

• A champion's long journey
• With titles comes the clout

• Tony Stewart won at Talladega, his 33rd career victory but his first in 2008. It was also his first win at Talladega.

• Jeff Burton won at Lowe's Motor Speedway, making 2008 his first multiple-win season since 2001.

• Jimmie Johnson won at Martinsville in dominating fashion, leading 339 laps -- the most he has ever led in a race in his career.

• Chase drivers won all 10 Chase races: Jimmie Johnson (three), Carl Edwards (three), Greg Biffle (two), along with Tony Stewart and Jeff Burton (one each).

• All 12 Chase drivers posted at least one top-10 finish in a Chase race. Only Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards did so in eight.

• All 12 Chase drivers led laps in at least one of the first nine Chase races, with Jimmie Johnson leading in nine. Chase drivers led 2,642 of the 3,234 laps (81.7 percent).

• Thirty-seven different drivers posted at least one top-10 finish in 2008, led by Carl Edwards with 27.

• There were nine green-white-checkered finishes this season:

• Patrick Carpentier and Paul Menard won consecutive career-first poles -- the first time that career-first poles had been posted in back-to-back races since David Green (Homestead) and Kevin Lepage (Atlanta) in 1999.

• Qualifying was canceled due to inclement weather 10 times.

• The driver starting from the pole won nine times and finished in the top 10 in 20 races this season.

• Two pole winners went on to finish last in that race: Ryan Newman (Phoenix) and Greg Biffle (Darlington).

• There were four first-time pole winners in 2008 -- Patrick Carpentier (New Hampshire), Paul Menard (Daytona), Travis Kvapil (Talladega), David Reutimann (Homestead) -- continuing a 22-year streak of at least one first-time pole winner (1987-2008).

• The deepest in the field that a race winner started in 2008 was 34th, by Tony Stewart at Talladega.

• Mark Martin has started second six times this season -- all as a result of timed qualifying.

• There were 619 on-track penalties issued this season.

• Chevrolet won its sixth consecutive manufacturers' title.

• Kevin Harvick extended his current streak of running at the finish to 80 races. That is the all-time record for consecutive races without a DNF. Harvick's RCR teammate Clint Bowyer is second on the list, currently on a 73-race streak of running at the finish.

• Five foreign-born drivers participated at Infineon Raceway: Marcos Ambrose (Australia), Patrick Carpentier and Ron Fellows (Canada), Juan Montoya (Colombia) and Max Papis (Italy). It was the largest contingent of foreign-born drivers in a race in Cup history, eclipsing the previous mark of three which was set eight times -- most recently at Infineon in 2007.

• At Watkins Glen, three nations were represented among the top five for the first time in Cup Series history. Kyle Busch (first), Tony Stewart (second) and Martin Truex Jr. (fifth) are from the United States, Marcos Ambrose (third) is from Australia and Juan Montoya (fourth) is from Colombia.

• The 28 different drivers that led at Talladega set the all-time Cup Series record for different lap leaders in a race. It eclipsed the mark of 26 set at Talladega in July 1986 and tied in April 2001, also at Talladega.