Chasers should accept what's past is prologue

"We certainly want to put ourselves in position to win a championship, there is no question about that. ... Everybody keeps wanting to give somebody the trophy, you know what I mean, and it is only half way through. It is not done yet."
-- Jeff Burton

Good for Burton; he's not giving up the ghost. And, surely, neither is Greg Biffle, Carl Edwards or Clint Bowyer. But reality bites -- and when it comes to keeping pace in the Chase, no one does it better than Jimmie Johnson, Chad Knaus and the No. 48 team.

Johnson's sixth-place finish at Charlotte, his first top-10 at the track since May 27, 2007, is exactly the type run you expect of the No. 48 crew -- a solid, unspectacular finish that confounds the competition on its best day.

To that end, no driver is going to concede the championship to Johnson. Burton has a valid point -- there is a lot of racing left -- but does anyone foresee the No. 48 team having multiple off days? In the past 20 second-half Chase races, Johnson has eight wins, 14 top-five finishes and only two finishes outside the top 10.

Johnson's eight wins during the final five races during the Chase era would rank 10th among all drivers in the past four-plus seasons! (JJ actually leads the series with 32 victories in the 175 races since 2004.)

The list of most wins since 2004: Jeff Gordon, 17; Tony Stewart, 16; Greg Biffle, 13; Carl Edwards, 13; Kyle Busch, 12; Kurt Busch, 10; Dale Earnhardt Jr., 9; Kasey Kahne, 9; Matt Kenseth, 9 ... and Jimmie Johnson's 8 in just the 20 second-half Chase races.

Believe me, I'd love to see Burton amid a cloud of confetti under the lights at Homestead. It would be the culmination of his prognostication during Preseason Thunder 2006: "I honestly believe that you will see an increase in performance on the track."

"When I stepped into Childress," Burton said, "I knew I was stepping into something that needed a lot of work. You don't fire drivers, and you don't hire crew chiefs and you're not making changes in your company if everything is going well."

There is no question that Richard Childress Racing has raised the bar during the ensuing two-plus seasons. But even as one of the elite Cup Series teams, RCR is not in the Hendrick Motorsports stratosphere.

Consistency is the key for the drivers' pursuit of the top spot, but über consistency is the hallmark of Johnson & Co. during the Chase. I doubt many of the drivers are Shakespeare fans, but ol' Bill channeled Nostradamus when he put pen to paper: "what's past is prologue."

In other words, we've seen this act play out.

Bump-and-run thoughts after Charlotte ...

Winner
• It's gotta be Jeff Burton, who moved up two spots and now trails Jimmie Johnson by 69 points. Burton has been a front-runner through five Chase races (he led the points in 2006) and he's been an also-ran (he trailed by 366 points last year).

The question is: Where does he go from here -- even-year Jeff or odd-year Burton?

Loser
• Carl Edwards' worst week ever included a 33rd-place finish, his worst run (and first outside the top 15) in eight starts at Charlotte. He dropped two spots in points and trails Johnson by 168.

And then there was the garage scuffle with Kevin Harvick. ... Did anyone else have the Kinks running through their head:

Yes, I'm a lover not a fighter
And I'm really built for speed

Lucky Dog
• "The first time I got it kind of soft and I thought all right, we're going to be OK. And then the car wasn't great and the No. 88 got underneath me and just the air from him being underneath me just made the whole car take off. It probably didn't help that we had the damage already, so man, that just killed our night. I know we came back with a really nice finish but it would have been so much better if we hadn't had that damage." -- Two whacks against the wall ... going a lap down ... finishing eighth -- nice work, Jeff Gordon.

Doug Pensinger/Getty Images

David Ragan's average finish is 15.9 through 31 races.

Who's hot
• Raise your hand if you know that David Ragan has a career-best three consecutive top-10 finishes. 'Tis true: eighth at Kansas; third at Talladega; 10th at Charlotte. He has 639 points through five Chase races -- more than championship contenders Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin.

Who's not
• Matt Kenseth has as many fortysomething finishes as he does top-10s in this year's Chase. He finished 41st at Charlotte, dropped to 11th in points and now trails Dale Earnhardt Jr. by six points for 10th place (and the all-important final spot on stage for the postseason awards banquet).

Entering the '08 Chase, Kenseth's worst finish in 40 playoff races was a 41st-place run at Atlanta on Oct. 31, 2004.

In case you missed it ...

Date	Track	Time	TV
Sept. 14	Loudon	1 p.m.	ABC
Sept. 21	Dover	1 p.m.	ABC
Sept. 28	Kansas	1 p.m.	ABC
Oct. 5	Talladega	1 p.m.	ABC
Oct. 11	Charlotte	7 p.m.	ABC
Oct. 19	Martinsville	1 p.m.	ABC
Oct. 26	Atlanta	1 p.m.	ABC
Nov. 2	Texas	3 p.m.	ABC
Nov. 9	Phoenix	3 p.m.	ABC
Nov. 16	Homestead	3 p.m.	ABC

All times ET

• There has been a Jamie McMurray sighting! He finished fifth at Charlotte, his first top-five since winning at Daytona on July 7, 2007.

• Kurt Busch finished third, Kyle Busch finished fourth. Which was more surprising?

• Mark Martin's average finish is 13.0 in 21 races this year. It was 14.5 in 24 starts last year. ... Maybe it's not so much DEI's equipment.

• Moreover, DEI's Martin Truex Jr. has three top-five finishes, eight top-10s, 13 top-15s and 22 top-20s in 31 races. ... DEI is not that far off, folks.

• Reed Sorenson cracked the top 15 for the first time since June 29 at Loudon. Seems a lot longer ago ...

• Bobby Labonte's 17th-place finish was his worst at Charlotte since May 28, 2006 (17th). In 32 races at the track, he's finished outside the top 20 only six times (four via DNFs) and has an average finish of 12.8.

• Scott Riggs does not have a DNF in 29 starts. He averaged 5.5 in his first four seasons.

• That whole "Ford. Drive one." sponsorship isn't living up to its billing for David Gilliland. In those six races, it's been "Ford. Drive 28.1," with a best finish of 19th at Dover.

Moving on to Martinsville

Tired of reading about Jimmie Johnson? Well, you might want to skip this section:

• Jeff Gordon (7) and Johnson (4) have combined for more wins than the rest of the field at Martinsville.

• Johnson has won three of the past four races at Martinsville. In 13 starts he has 12 consecutive top-10 finishes, and he hasn't finished outside the top four since April 10, 2005.

• Johnson's average finish (6.0) is the all-time mark at Martinsville. Gordon is second (7.0).

• The points leader with five races remaining has failed to win the championship in each of the past two seasons. In 2006, Johnson was in seventh place, 146 points behind leader Jeff Burton. Last year, Johnson was in second, 68 points behind Gordon. ... This year, call it getting a jump on the competition.

In Memoriam

T. Taylor Warren, a NASCAR contract photographer since 1952, captured some of the most notable moments in the sport's history. Known to friends as "T," he got into photography at the age of 10, continued shooting in high school and honed his craft at the Rochester (N.Y.) Institute of Technology.

Warren was the first photographer to win the International Motorsports Hall of Fame's Henry T. McLemore Award for achievement in journalism, an honor presented to him in 2006. He passed away Oct. 8.

Warren captured the final moments of the 1959 Daytona 500 as Joe Weatherly, Lee Petty (42) and Johnny Beauchamp (73) raced to the finish line. With Weatherly two laps down, Petty beat Beauchamp for the historic win, but Beauchamp was initially awarded the victory.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.