Past two weeks have given reason to be thankful

After a 2010 season that left NASCAR racing fans with plenty to be thankful for, leave it to Rick Hendrick to absolutely break the bank.

Less than two days before Thanksgiving Day and about two days after current Hendrick Motorsports star Jimmie Johnson clinched his fifth consecutive Cup Series championship, the team owner announced virtually a comprehensive reorganization of every one of his teams except Johnson's.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans might have the most reason to be thankful, as Earnhardt in 2011 will race under the guidance of Steve Letarte, who for the past five years has guided Jeff Gordon into the heat of the Chase -- including three consecutive runs of second or third.

And what's the additional bonus? Letarte and his new No. 88 enclave will remain housed with five-time champion crew chief Chad Knaus in the renamed "48/88" shop. Now, all Letarte has to do is channel Pops Eury and he and Junior might be onto something.

Gordon might celebrate Thanksgiving 2011 as the most thankful of all, if his pairing with brilliant engineer Alan Gustafson pays off. Gustafson, an 11-year Hendrick employee, has had success with a variety of drivers at HMS and, if he and Gordon approximate the success Gustafson had in 2009 in his debut season with Mark Martin, Gordon's fifth championship could be the result.

Gustafson remains paired in the newly-minted "5/24" shop with Martin's new crew chief, Lance McGrew. McGrew's had significant success at HMS, namely the 2003 Busch Series championship with Brian Vickers and the 2004 Busch Series rookie of the year title with Kyle Busch.

If the veterans Martin and McGrew can hit the ground running, it'll make Martin's final full season with Hendrick Motorsports one to be thankful for, for sure -- especially if it gets Martin back into the Chase territory he's so familiar with.

Hendrick's whirlwind of changes was the coup de grace in a season that was classified as the "most competitive" in the 62-year history of NASCAR's premier division. And while NASCAR's new methods of tracking statistics makes many of the current categories irrelevant historically -- make no mistake, the competition on the race tracks this season was something to be thankful for.

So in the end Johnson, who's become the master of the Chase method of crowning a champion, had the most to be thankful for as his team performed well enough through the Chase to be in a position to execute a perfect strategy in the Ford 400 that secured their fifth title.

Despite his dismay at failing in his attempt to claim his first Sprint Cup crown -- particularly after coming to Homestead in a controlling position -- Denny Hamlin has a lot to be thankful for.

Hamlin's Joe Gibbs Racing team proved it could win, which it did a league-leading eight times, and that it could be fast when it had to be. Hamlin's blossoming maturity was something the entire JGR organization was thankful for. And even when Hamlin slipped, as he did post-race at Phoenix, he had to be thankful the dash in his No. 11 Toyota had some "give" in it.

It does him no good at the payout window -- and as a team owner Kevin Harvick's learned how important that fact is -- but Harvick and his followers had to be thankful to know that no one had a better statistical full season than Harvick did.

Speaking of irrelevance, the "old" way of computing points -- based on a season's worth of races -- went out of current use after the 2003 season. But it's still a fact that Harvick's full season, in which he claimed the equally mythical "regular season championship," resulted in him being 285 points ahead of Johnson after 36 races.

And that should be something for Harvick and his fans to be thankful for.

There's a lot more thanks that'll be spread around, but in the Sprint Cup garage maybe no one will be more thankful for the next season to get under way than Carl Edwards. Obviously, Edwards was on a massive role in both the Nationwide Series -- where he swept both races at Phoenix -- and Cup Series, where he went two-for-two to close the season.

You could, of course, argue that Edwards was thankful to have emerged intact from the grandstands -- where he went after both his victories at Phoenix and Homestead to celebrate with fans. But much more than that, he's probably most thankful to go into next season -- albeit for the second time in two years -- as the favorite to knock off Johnson.

And that, race fans, is a reason for all of you to be thankful -- because that makes 2011 something to really look forward to.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.

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