Sporting News Power Poll after Fontana
By the Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service
Jimmie Johnson continued his run of top-three finishes and is the unanimous No. 1 pick for the second week in a row in the Sporting News Power Poll. Sunday’s winner, Tony Stewart, jumped to second, one spot ahead of Denny Hamlin, who is second in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, 36 points behind Johnson. The weekly poll is a collaboration of Sporting News and Rowdy.com.
1. Jimmie Johnson (Last week: 1st) Johnson has five top-three finishes in the past six races. It’s tough to gain on the points leader when he finishes in the top three every week.
2. Tony Stewart (7th) Smoke kept his Chase hopes alive with Sunday’s win at Fontana.
3. Denny Hamlin (6th) After all the prerace maneuvering with his car, an eighth-place finish wasn’t all that bad. And Hamlin is still within striking distance of Johnson, as we suspected.
4. Kevin Harvick (2nd) Harvick has been outperformed by Johnson in each of the past three races. Then again, Johnson has beaten nearly everyone in that stretch.
5. Jeff Gordon (5th) If he hopes to win a championship in the Chase format, Gordon can’t afford small mistakes, much less major ones—like speeding on pit road late in a race.
6. Clint Bowyer (16th) Forty laps led at California and a second-place finish was a fine effort in a spot where so many others could have or would have folded.
7. Ryan Newman (9th) Newman scored his first top five since his victory at Phoenix in April.
8. Carl Edwards (3rd) A bad ignition rotor derailed a promising run toward the Cup title.
9. Mark Martin (17th) The No. 5 was just as fast as any Hendrick car for most of the California race. Big sigh of relief for Martin fans.
10. Kurt Busch (9th) Foolishly, Busch thought hugging the wall and giving David Ragan the entire rest of the track would be sufficient. Rookie mistake.
11. Kyle Busch (8th) David Reutimann took him down in Kansas. In Fontana it was the 18’s engine. He said on the radio his championship hopes were over. He’s right.
12. AJ Allmendinger (13th) For the first time in the past six races Allmendinger failed to run a single lap in the top five.
13. Jeff Burton (11th) Finishes of 15th, 18th and 23rd have doomed Burton. And what was with Burton and Harvick mixing it up early in the race?
14. Greg Biffle (4th) Last week the Biff stepped up. This week he blew up—and so did his championship hopes.
15. Joey Logano (18th) Logano made gains in the latter half of the race, but fell just outside the top 10.
16. Kasey Kahne (25th) Kahne has now equaled his top-five total from 2009 (seven) but will fall short of matching his 2004 (13) or 2006 (12) numbers.
17. Jamie McMurray (15th) McMurray won the pole at Fontana but couldn’t find the handle for Sunday’s race.
18. Matt Kenseth (10th) The bad news: Kenseth tied for his worst finish of the year (30th). The good news: He was the highest-finishing Roush driver. Or course, that’s not saying much.
19. David Reutimann (22nd) Reutimann finished 10th. Kyle Busch finished 35th. Who’s the $%&*# now?
20. Paul Menard (14th) Menard’s top-10 streak ends at two with a 22nd-place finish.
21. Juan Pablo Montoya (20th) Once again Montoya fails to turn a top-five start into a top-10 finish. Out of 11 top-five starts in 2010 he has recorded four top-10 finishes.
22. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (19th) Junior recovered to finish 16th after a bizarre call to stay out while others hit pit road.
23. Martin Truex Jr. (25th) The 56 was fast in California, and the pit crew was a bright spot—as it has been all year—but a late collision on pit road dropped Truex all the way to 18th at the finish.
24. Regan Smith (NR) Smith posts his best finish of the year, 12th.
25. Elliott Sadler (NR) Sadler qualified second, ran 108 laps in the top 15 and finished 13th, his second-best finish of the year
No comments:
Post a Comment