Who’s on track: Breaking down the top 12 after Texas
By Bill Marx
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service
(November 10, 2009)
Talladega came a week later for Jimmie Johnson. After surviving Talladega and finishing sixth, Johnson crashed early at Texas and finished 38th. Houston, we have a race. Maybe. Here’s the breakdown of the top 12 after Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway.
1. Jimmie Johnson, 6,297 points. Here’s the way I see it: If Johnson had crashed and finished 38th at Talladega and then come back with a sixth-place finish at Texas, everyone would have said, “There’s that 48 team showing how great it is at bouncing back. That 73-point lead is going to be hard to overcome.” Instead, it was reversed, and now Johnson’s lead is “only 73 points.” Count me among those who think Johnson still has a meaty lead with two races to go.
2. Mark Martin, 6,224. Hooray for Martin. He seized the day with a fourth-place finish. Martin had to have a top-five finish after Johnson went out early, and the No. 5 team came through. Johnson is not going to cough up 111 points every race, but when it happens, you have to pounce. And Martin did.
3. Jeff Gordon, 6,185. Then there was Gordon. He needed a Martin-like finish and instead came home 13th, leaving a lot of points on the table. His outside shot at a fifth title fizzled.
4. Kurt Busch, 6,126. The No. 2 team’s decision to pit on Lap 271, two laps after Kurt’s brother, Kyle, pitted, was the difference. Kurt won his 20th Cup race by 25.686 seconds, the largest margin of victory since NASCAR began using electronic scoring in May 1993.
5. Tony Stewart, 6,119. Stewart picked up 101 points on Johnson with his sixth-place finish, but that still leaves him 178 back. He is 58 points ahead of sixth-place Juan Pablo Montoya, and a top-five finish would give Stewart the fifth of his 11-year Cup career.
6. Juan Pablo Montoya, 6,061. A wreck on Lap 174 sent Montoya to the garage, and he emerged with enough time to finish 37th, his worst finish of the year. Last season he finished worse than 37th eight times.
7. Greg Biffle, 6,050. How inconsistent has Biffle been this season? Biffle finished eighth for his first back-to-back top-10 finishes since late August-early September and only his second since April.
8. Denny Hamlin, 5,975. Sometimes you do everything right and fate deals you a bad finish. Or, you do everything wrong and finish second. That’s what happened Sunday for the No. 11 team. Poor pit stops coupled with Hamlin’s brush with the wall set the No. 11 way back. But it also meant Hamlin would have gas left at the end. And, shazam! Almost 26 seconds after Busch takes the checkered flag, here comes Hamlin with his fourth second-place finish of the year.
9. Ryan Newman, 5,973. Newman finished 12th, leaving him at 15 top 10s this season. One more top 10 will give him his most in a season since 2005 when he had 16.
10. Kasey Kahne, 5,898. Kahne continued his odd trend of finishing in the top eight or in the 30s by finishing 33rd, his fourth Chase finish in the back of the field. This week’s stop is at Phoenix, where, if you are wondering, Kahne finished 13th earlier this year.
11. Carl Edwards, 5,857. Edwards was a victim of Montoya and was saddled with his second DNF of the Chase and third of the season. He finished 39th, and his average finish is now 15.3. It was 9.5 last year.
12. Brian Vickers, 5,777. Vickers finished 26th and is still looking for his first top 10 of the Chase. He didn’t finish well last year, either, failing to score a top 10 in his final 13 races. In fact, Vickers’ last top 10 in the final 10 races of the season was Oct. 28, 2007, when he finished 10th at Atlanta.
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