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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Everyone Else Racing For Second Place?
With five races left in the Chase, Jimmie Johnson has a comfortable points lead...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted October 21, 2009   Charlotte, NC
Jimmie Johnson has won three of the first five races in NASCAR’s Chase. (photo: LAT photographic)

Asked about the phenomenal performance of Jimmie Johnson and his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet in this year’s Chase for the Sprint Cup, Denny Hamlin minced no words.

“If he was 150 behind right now I'd still say he would be the guy to beat,” said Hamlin. “They can just step it up when they really need to. They were running lap times at the end of the Charlotte race that were near qualifying times. I just don't know if anyone else has that ability to step up like that.”

Hamlin’s comments have some historical support.

Heading into Martinsville Speedway, site of Sunday’s TUMS Fast Relief 500, in 2006, Johnson was seventh in points, 146 back of leader Jeff Burton. But Johnson won that race, while Burton broke, and before you knew it, Johnson had won the first of three consecutive championships.

This year, though, Johnson isn’t 146 points behind. He’s 90 up on Mark Martin and 135 ahead of Jeff Gordon, his two Hendrick Motorsports teammates. Worse yet — at least for his competitors — he’s coming off a weekend where he won from the pole, led the most laps and was fastest in all three practices at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

And now, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series rolls into Martinsville, where the all-conquering No. 48 Chevrolet has won five of the last six races and hasn’t finished outside the top 10 since April 2002.

While all those variables certainly seem to point to a fourth consecutive Johnson championship, not everyone is willing to anoint him just yet.

“It's not over,” said Mark Martin, who finished 17th Saturday night at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. “I still say, like I've said all along, we've got to get through Martinsville and Talladega. Then we'll have a clear view of what's going to happen here with this championship. Give us those two more races to see.”

Although Martin lost 78 points to Johnson at LMS after finishing seventh or better in the previous seven races, he’s not giving up.

“We have had some great weekends this year,” he said. “We've done better and won more than I ever dreamed of. And with that, you've got to take the not-so-great weekends, too. And that's what happened. It's all in how you handle it. And this team could've given up, but they didn't. We fought for the best finish we could get, and, unfortunately, that was 17th. That's just racing. That's what happens.”

But no one will be realistically contending for a championship year if Johnson wins again at Martinsville, and everyone knows that.

“The one thing we need to do is beat Jimmie,” said Steve Letarte, Gordon’s crew chief. “We've had great cars there for practice, we qualify well and we always race well for the first 200 to 300 laps. But it feels like for the last 200 laps of the race we lack a little something. Right now, we're going to be very aggressive at Martinsville. We're going there to win. We're not going there for a top-five finish. That's a place I feel we can be aggressive.”

Will that be enough, though? Hamlin doesn’t think so.

“Obviously, the way the 48 is performing, we're not going to be leading the points in this position anywhere, even if we didn't have the two bad weeks that we had,” said Hamlin, who had a crash at Kansas and an engine failure at LMS.

“However, we could at least be hoping, maybe, that they have trouble at Martinsville or Talladega and still could get in and have a shot at this championship if they have one bad week. But it's just not happened. I saw that he hasn't finished out of the top 15 in 31 or 33 Chase races in a row. That's just hard, hard to beat. Hat's off to them for having that reliability and for having that performance.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED, and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to



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