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Jimmie Johnson left Lowe's Motor Speedway with a 69-point lead Saturday night following the Bank of America 500, but don't fall in line with those in the NASCAR media who are already etching his name on the Sprint Cup trophy.Why, you ask, should we not see Johnson as the clear favorite despite him winning the last two championships?
Well, just take a look back to one year ago.
Teammate Jeff Gordon had just won his 6th race of 2007, his second in-a-row, and had a 68-point lead in the championship standings over Johnson as the Chase for the Sprint Cup entered the last half of the ten race stretch.
Yes, Jeff Gordon was en route to finally winning his fifth NASCAR title.
But it didn't happen.
Johnson stepped his game immensely in the final stretch, winning the next five races and hammering Gordon over the final stretch in a 145-point swing to win it by 77 points. What's more impressive is that Gordon's worst finish over that stretch was a 10th-place run at Phoenix.
Knowing that and applying it to the current Chase standings, at the very least Johnson, Lowe's winner Jeff Burton, Carl Edwards, and possibly Clint Bowyer all have a fighting chance at the 2008 title. Burton sits 69 points back, Edwards is minus 168 and Bowyer trails by 185.
I'm certainly not expecting anyone to go on a four-race tear like Johnson did -- though Edwards is the most likely candidate to win at least two or three races in the final stretch -- but something as simple as an ill-advised move, a broken rear end, or brake problems at Martinsville for Johnson would drastically shake up the Chase standings.
Five races is a lot of laps for things to break or go wrong and given the extremely good luck Johnson has seen in the latter parts of his past two Chase championships, the odds that something will bite the No. 48 at some point have to be increased.
Johnson, crew chief Chad Knaus and the rest of the No. 48 team are likely the best on-track combination NASCAR has right now -- the two consecutive titles might back that up, eh? -- but there's not a team in the garage that isn't immune to silly part failures or even the Robby Gordon's of the NASCAR world.
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