The LifeLock 400 at Chicagoland was won by Kyle Busch, thus proving once and for all that NASCAR has allowed Toyota an extremely unfair advantage… By allowing Kyle to drive a Toyota.
All this talk about the unfair advantage Toyota has been given by NASCAR just went out the window. The only advantage Toyota has is Kyle Busch driving for one of their teams.
In what turned into a showdown between Hendrick Motorsports’ latest Cup Champion, Jimmie Johnson, and Kyle Busch, their former driver who was unceremoniously cut loose last year over Casey Mears (who they’ve set free at the end of this season) to make room for NASCAR’s hottest commodity, Dale Earnhardt Jr.
With 20 laps to go, and coming off a rare caution during this race that may have set the record for the highest average Cup race speed at Chicagoland, Rick Hendrick’s hope for a happy birthday, seeing Jimmie Johnson in Hendrick’s 48 Chevy wind up in Victory lane was about to come true. Jimmie had just driven around Kyle Busch who had at the time led for 164 of the 247 laps run. Johnson pulled away and it appeared Busch might also be in trouble as Kevin Harvick looked to be making a run to take over second. Then as the race wound down, the one thing the Hendrick faithful didn’t want to see happened as David Gilliland’s number 38 Ford blew its engine and out came a late caution. This brought Johnson back to the pack for a single file two lap run to the finish.
So it all boiled down to a showdown. Johnson seemed to be in control as the 48 was obviously the stronger car. All he would have to do is run his best line and in two laps it would be over. Let’s face it, Kyle Busch would be satisfied with a second place finish wouldn’t he? The only remaining question concerned whether Busch had enough to hold off another strong Chevrolet that was running right on his bumper as the pack approached what would turn out to be a green/white/checkered end to the LifeLock 400. Apparently all would be right with the world according to Hendrick Motorsports and Chevrolet. Rick Hendrick had to be eyeing a big birthday cake with VICTORY! scribbled across it. That cake would be fantastic! He must have been all set to hug a soaking wet Jimmie Johnson. It would be about time that darned Kyle Busch would get his! The script was written.
Jimmie decided to play it slow on the restart, trying to surprise Kyle and get a good jump. Kyle would have none of this. He hadn’t read the script! All he knew was he had been presented with yet another chance to rub Hendrick’s nose in it. Kyle put the hammer down and nosed his M&M’s Toyota right into the rear end of the Lowes Chevy. Johnson floor boarded his ride in response and together the two lead cars jumped away from Harvick. Kyle did the only thing he could do, as Johnson stayed near the white line on the inside. Kyle jumped out and ran to the high line, a place that he had shunned the whole race. He kept his pedal firmly planted to the metal and held on hoping against hope that the car would stick.
Johnson, who had run magnificently on that very same high line most of the evening was stuck down low and low wouldn’t be good for Lowes… Kyle dove down off the high line and began running side by side with Jimmie. As they negotiated a turn the two cars just touched and the Chevy bobbled. Johnson was forced to ever so slightly get off the gas. It was all Kyle needed. He took the lead and made it count over the course of the final lap.
Please allow me a little leniency here…
For somewhere birds are singing, and somewhere the stars shine bright, but there is no joy in Hendrickville, mighty Johnson lost the showdown last night!
Anyone who didn’t enjoy the final few laps of this race just can’t be much of a NASCAR fan, even if you wanted Johnson/Hendrick to win. Yes, there was luck involved, there always is, but anyone who passes off Kyle Busch as just having an unfair advantage didn’t see the race I saw.
This guy is in the driving zone and it’s a zone few drivers have been in for quite some time. He is breathing some pretty rarefied air as he now has 7 wins in 19 cup starts this season tying Darrell Waltrip for second behind the great Dale Earnhardt who accomplished 8 wins in 19 starts one season. Incidently, both Earnhardt and Waltrip won the Cup in the seasons they had this type of success. Face it folks, the kid’s good!
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Kyle Busch runs down a two time Cup champion and sweeps Chicagoland, 2008!
Over the last few days I’ve read in various sources that Mark Martin will announce this weekend that he is leaving DEI at the end of the year and will become a full time driver once again taking over the number 5 car with Hendrick Motorsports. He will state in so many words that he has come to the conclusion that he wants to make one more run at the Cup Championship and that Hendrick offers him the best chance to do it in the number 5 car. I may have missed it, but I haven’t seen anyone fanning the flames of this rumor here in the Fox Sports community…
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Hendricks has announced that they will be holding a news conference tomorrow in Daytona, which just happens to be where Mark Martin lives.
If the Mark Martin move comes to pass, this changes what many fans thought was Tony Stewart 's destination. So where does Tony go, especially if he cherishes Chevrolet? The Haas deal may just take a big step closer to reality with their Chevrolet connection.
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It seems like a natural for Tony, plus it would put him in the driver’s seat in more ways than one. Tony’s reputation and seemingly successful business history in the racing industry would go a long way toward attracting and maintaining strong sponsorships and that’s half the battle.
Will tomorrow's announcement be the first in a set of dominos to fall causing a ripple effect throughout NASCAR? If Martin does move will people construe this as yet another blow to DEI's credibility?
Looking back at last season’s races as each new 2008 race weekend comes into view, I keep seeing the same team winning last year and the same team not in victory lane this year. What in the Sam Hill is going on here? By this time last year, Hendrick Motorsports teams had won 7 of the 10 Cup races run. That is pure and simple domination. On top of that the four team stable had 11 finishes from second through fifth and another five finishes in sixth through tenth! This team had won 70% of the 2007 season’s races through this point last year!
Naturally leading the way for Hendricks were two of the top drivers in NASCAR, Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon. Johnson had 4 firsts, 1 second, a third and a fourth, while Jeff Gordon brought in 2 firsts, 3 seconds, a third, two fourths and one tenth place finish. What one driver didn’t win or was in the running for, the other pretty much was. Kyle Busch was holding his own with these two veteran drivers as he had one first place finish (Bristol), a second, a fourth and three finishes between sixth and tenth. Casey Mears followed with just one tenth place finish.
Fast forward to 2008. Hendrick Motorsports replaced Kyle Busch with another top NASCAR driver, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and the racing team looked poised to once again dominate NASCAR with it’s four car stable of Chevrolets. A year begun full of optimism has not yet developed for Hendrick though. While Dale has held up his end of the bargain with a second, a third, a fifth and three other finishes in the top ten, it’s Johnson, with one win on the season and three other top ten finishes, and Gordon, with no wins and four top ten finishes, that have fallen off in performance. The production these two are responsible for has been cut in half concerning top ten finishes from 16 to 8, with the largest fall in wins from 6 to only 1. Hendrick Motorsports as a whole has fallen from 23 total top ten finishes in 2007 to 16 this year.
The question remains: What is going on here? According to Jimmie Johnson it’s NASCAR’s Car of Tomorrow. In a recent interview, Johnson stated, “If you look at a lot of my victories last year, at the start of the season they were on the 1½-mile and two-mile tracks, with the old-style car. And we’ve been working hard to understand what this new car needs on the big tracks.
“My teammates have gotten off to a little better start than I did. Then I came on at Texas and ran well.
“I think our short-track program has been on par. At Bristol I was more competitive than I have ever been. At Martinsville, Jeff and I were up front and very competitive.
“We’re just trying to develop the bigger-track stuff.”
Gordon’s explanation: "We've got to start putting more consistent runs together, and getting ourselves further up in the points. You've got to walk before you can run, and I've always said when you're consistently top five and leading laps, the wins are going to come. We just haven't been doing that....
"One of the things we are being challenged with right now is Goodyear has changed the tires just about everywhere we have gone this year, except for Martinsville. So all the setups we had last year, you can just throw them out the window; they don't seem to work.
"Not to mention that the other teams have stepped up, and we are trying to step up along with them.
"What comes along with that are challenges -- sometimes you hit the setup, sometimes you mess. Right now we are definitely a little off our game because we are coming back to tracks we have had success at -- but not everything is the same.
"It is pretty confusing to us.
"I know how great our organization is, and our teams. And I have confidence in myself. But when you show up at the track and cars are doing things you aren't used to, it throws you for a loop.
"We spent three or four days testing in Nashville the last two weeks and felt we really had some big gains, and showed up here and it didn't feel anything like that.
"We aren't there yet; we still have work to do. It is as much me as it is our cars and setups.
"Sometimes you have to learn how to drive different setups. I went through this many times in my career. I probably go back to, like, 2000 and 2005: both years we really were searching for speed, and everybody was transitioning to different setups. We tried them, and they didn't work for me.
"A little bit of it was my driving style; some of it, just getting used to a different feel. That is one of the things we are dealing with right now.
"There are some major, big changes going on in setups.
"This car was created to simplify things -- and in my mind all I have seen is things becoming more complicated."
In another vein, it always helps if your teammates work together with you as Gordon alluded to at the end of the Talladega run two weeks ago. Gordon, while stating it’s a non-issue now, was upset with Dale Earnhardt, Jr. for not helping him in the restrictor plate race. Gordon and Earnhardt have moved beyond that now saying that the team needs to sit down and review what tactics will be best for Hendrick Motorsports prior to the next restrictor plate race.
The bottom line in all of this? It appears more time is needed figuring out the right set ups for the CoT and possibly more fellowship is needed among the drivers.
The people on these teams are too good for this to continue much longer, and like Jeff Gordon says, “When you're consistently top five and leading laps, the wins are going to come.”
The scene shifts to Darlington South Carolina, the track that couldn’t be tamed! More Saturday night racin'!
I'm a sports fanatic living on the west coast of Florida. I'm a rare bird that moved here from the left coast a couple of years ago. I advocate an even playing field in all of life's endeavors.
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record for the highest average Cup race speed at Chicagoland, Rick Hendrick’s hope for a happy birthday, seeing Jimmie Johnson in Hendrick’s 48 Chevy wind up in Victory lane was about to come true. Jimmie had just driven around Kyle Busch who had at the time led for 164 of the 247 laps run. Johnson pulled away and it appeared Busch might also be in trouble as Kevin Harvick looked to be making a run to take over second. Then as the race wound down, the one thing the Hendrick faithful didn’t want to see happened as David Gilliland’s number 38 Ford blew its engine and out came a late caution. This brought Johnson back to the pack for a single file two lap run to the finish.
another strong Chevrolet that was running right on his bumper as the pack approached what would turn out to be a green/white/checkered end to the LifeLock 400. Apparently all would be right with the world according to Hendrick Motorsports and Chevrolet. Rick Hendrick had to be eyeing a big birthday cake with VICTORY! scribbled across it. That cake would be fantastic! He must have been all set to hug a soaking wet Jimmie Johnson. It would be about time that darned Kyle Busch would get his! The script was written. 
Kyle would have none of this. He hadn’t read the script! All he knew was he had been presented with yet another chance to rub Hendrick’s nose in it. Kyle put the hammer down and nosed his M&M’s Toyota right into the rear end of the Lowes Chevy. Johnson floor boarded his ride in response and together the two lead cars jumped away from Harvick. Kyle did the only thing he could do, as Johnson stayed near the white line on the inside. Kyle jumped out and ran to the high line, a place that he had shunned the whole race. He kept his pedal firmly planted to the metal and held on hoping against hope that the car would stick. 
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racing team looked poised to once again dominate NASCAR with it’s four car stable of Chevrolets. A year begun full of optimism has not yet developed for Hendrick though. While Dale has held up his end of the bargain with a second, a third, a fifth and three other finishes in the top ten, it’s Johnson, with one win on the season and three other top ten finishes, and Gordon, with no wins and four top ten finishes, that have fallen off in performance. The production these two are responsible for has been cut in half concerning top ten finishes from 16 to 8, with the largest fall in wins from 6 to only 1. Hendrick Motorsports as a whole has fallen from 23 total top ten finishes in 2007 to 16 this year. 
interview, Johnson stated, “If you look at a lot of my victories last year, at the start of the season they were on the 1½-mile and two-mile tracks, with the old-style car. And we’ve been working hard to understand what this new car needs on the big tracks.
when you're consistently top five and leading laps, the wins are going to come. We just haven't been doing that....
