Busch, Edwards, Johnson highlight 2008 Cup season

After the meteoric rise and fall of one of Sprint Cup's burgeoning superstars, Kyle Busch, the 2008 season ended the way the previous two had -- with a Jimmie Johnson championship.

This one was special. Johnson's dominating performance in the Chase for enabled the driver of the No. 48 Chevrolet to join an exclusive club that previously had only one member: Cale Yarborough. Johnson became the second driver to win three consecutive Cup championships, and he did so without a major mistake in the final 10 races.

With a comfortable 15th-place finish in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway -- a stark contrast to a very uncomfortable 15th-place finish at Texas two weeks earlier -- Johnson won the title by 69 points over Carl Edwards, who won three of the final four races but couldn't over come a critical mistake at Talladega and the bizarre simultaneous failure of both ignition boxes in his No. 99 Ford at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

Edwards and Busch, however, were the two drivers who started the season as if they were the two who were going to battle for the championship. Busch won eight of the first 26 races, beginning with Atlanta in March and ending with his second road-course victory of the season, at Watkins Glen.

That final win was a highlight of a remarkable season that saw Busch win a record-tying 10 times in the Nationwide Series and three times in the Craftsman Truck Series, but it was also the end of the road for Busch in the Cup Series. Entering the Chase as the top seed, Busch suffered mechanical problems at New Hampshire, Dover and Kansas and fell precipitously from title contention.

Edwards won early, too, with victories in the second and third races of the season, at Fontana and Las Vegas. An oil tank cover violation at Las Vegas, however, cost Edwards the 10 Chase bonus points he would have earned for the win, in addition to a 100-point penalty. By the end of the year, he would surpass Busch for most victories in the series with nine.

In the first year in which NASCAR's new racecar was used exclusively in the Cup Series, Johnson struggled at the beginning of the season. After five races, he was 13th in the championship standings, without a win. Though he picked up his first victory of the season in April at Phoenix, Johnson felt his team found real speed for the first time at Michigan in June, when he led a race-high 65 laps and finished sixth.

Despite his early travails, however, Johnson wasn't worried about qualifying for the Chase.

"I don't think we felt like we wouldn't have a shot at the championship," he explained. "But we knew we needed to get things together. It just took a team effort of testing, of R&D from the engine shop, from chassis, body -- all the departments. Just everybody had to buckle down and find out where the speed was. Just keep it simple. We had to really find out where to work and what to work on.

"It takes a while. When you're off base, it takes a while to one, recognize when you're off base, two, find out what the problem is, and three, start working in new areas to find speed. It just took us a little time. We got things turned around and got into a comfortable position to transfer into the Chase.

"As the season went on, we just kept getting stronger and stronger and understanding the car better and better -- from my standpoint of driving it to setting it up."

The fourth race in the Chase, at Talladega, was the start of Edwards' undoing. Up to that point, Edwards, Roush Fenway Racing teammate Greg Biffle (who picked up his only two wins of the year in the first two races of the Chase) and Johnson were contesting the championship on equal terms.

Bump-drafting through the third turn late in the Talladega race, Edwards spun Biffle and triggered a multi-car wreck that damaged his chances as well as that of this teammate.

The ignition box failures the following week at Charlotte put Edwards so far behind that even his frenzied charge at the end of the season wasn't enough to catch Johnson, who cemented his title with a victory from the pole in the penultimate race at Phoenix.

It was a season of strength for Cup's strongest teams. Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, Joe Gibbs Racing and Richard Childress Racing filled the Chase field with three drivers each. Though Ryan Newman won the 50th running of the Daytona 500 in February, only two other drivers who subsequently failed to qualify for the Chase would win races in 2008 -- Kasey Kahne at Lowe's and Pocono and Kurt Busch in a rain-shortened event at New Hampshire.

The Chase played out against the backdrop of a severe economic downturn in which the auto industry has become one of the biggest question marks. Layoffs, in lieu of celebration, followed the close of the season at Homestead, as teams trimmed personnel, many hired for the 2007 season, when Cup teams had to compete simultaneously with old car/new car platforms.

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.

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• 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.