Worst to first in the Chase? Johnson does it in 2006

As the 2008 Chase for the Sprint Cup is set to begin this weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, there is a rule of thumb that states "there is no way to win the championship after one of 10 races, but it is possible to lose it."

In the past four seasons, for the most part, that theory has held true. Poor starts in the first race of the Chase usually have spelled doom for those drivers unlucky to finish 30th or worse at New Hampshire.

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In 2004, Tony Stewart, Ryan Newman and Jeremy Mayfield all found trouble at New Hampshire and never were factors for the rest of the Chase. Stewart was able to rally to finish sixth, but 180 points behind eventual champion Kurt Busch.

Those three switched places in the 2005 Chase. A crash on Lap 3 of the 2005 New Hampshire race left Busch with a 35th-place finish -- and he would finish last behind eventual champion Stewart, who had the dominant car until being passed by Newman on the next-to-last lap.

Kyle Busch kept it all in the family in 2006, when he collided with Jeff Green on the third lap and wrecked again later in the race. His 38th-place finish at New Hampshire led to an eventual last-place finish in that season's Chase.

But there seems to be an exception to every rule, and the driver who finished 39th that day proved that you can still win the title by going from worst to first.

After his win at Indianapolis in August -- his fourth of the season -- Jimmie Johnson had a comfortable 100-point lead on the rest of the field and was virtually guaranteed a spot in the Chase. In the next five races however, the No. 48 failed to score a top-10 finish -- leading only five more laps-- and eventually fell to second behind Matt Kenseth when the Chase field was set.

Still, when New Hampshire rolled around, Johnson and his team expected to be ready to challenge for the championship. But things seemed to go wrong right from the drop of the green flag. Struggling with a sour engine, Johnson stopped in the pits several times during the first caution in an attempt to make repairs, putting him deep in the field on the restart.

And when Sterling Marlin swerved into Johnson in an effort to avoid Greg Biffle's car on Lap 89, things went from bad to worse in an instant. Johnson's car slammed hard into the wall, heavily damaging his Chevrolet for the rest of the day.

"I hope I don't eat the words I said early on when I said you can't win the championship here in New Hampshire, but you can lose it," Johnson said. "I just know what happened out there, just something weird with the engine that put us back there and then we got caught up in a wreck.

"Hopefully, this won't keep us from being the champion when it is all said and done."

Johnson soldiered on, completing 233 laps and finishing 39th. And after leading the standings for all but four weeks of the season, he found himself in ninth place, 139 points behind eventual race-winner Kevin Harvick.

"There are nine more races," Johnson said. "There's a lot of time left. Anything can happen. I lost the Chase for the championship on the last lap of the last race at Homestead [in 2004]. So who knows, maybe I can win it that way this year."

After finishes of 37th at Talladega and 32nd at Kansas in 2004, Johnson won four of the next five races and finished second in the season-finale at Homestead, only to lose the championship by eight points.

After New Hampshire, teammate Jeff Gordon proved to be prophetic when asked about Johnson's chances of rebounding.

"Sometimes I think they do better when they are angry and get behind," Gordon said. "I look for those guys to be on quite a tear in the next five or six races and try to get themselves back into it.

"Obviously, that isn't how you want to get your Chase started ... but we have seen Jimmie do it before."

Surprisingly, Johnson continued to struggle for the next few races, finishing 13th at Dover, 14th at Kansas and 24th at Talladega, leaving him 156 points behind then-leader Jeff Burton with six races to go.

Then -- just like 2004 -- Johnson suddenly was almost unstoppable. He finished second to Kasey Kahne at Lowe's and made up major ground at Martinsville the next weekend when he won the race and Burton's engine expired, leaving him 42nd.

Now third and only 41 points behind Kenseth, Johnson reeled off three more runner-up finishes. Heading into Homestead, Johnson had a 63-point cushion. Knowing all he needed to do was to keep Kenseth in his sights, he did just that: finishing ninth, three spots behind the No. 17, despite struggling with damage to the grill of his car early on.

"I think we knew in our hearts we could do it all along, we just got into some bad luck at the beginning," Johnson said after accepting the championship trophy. "That's what let us get the momentum, let us sleep well at night, is because we knew this team was capable of winning a championship. We just had to have some good luck."

So can someone repeat Johnson's worst-to-first feat this season? The odds are long, but as he proved in 2006, not impossible.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.