The 2007 NASCAR Season Review

Jimmie Johnson's career may be just taking off. The now two-time Nextel Cup champion is rapidly closing in on the rate of success of his Hendrick teammate Jeff Gordon, who was impressed by this fellow Californian back in 2000 and suggested his name to Rick Hendrick to start a fourth team in his organisation.

Since his first full season in the Nextel Cup, Johnson has finished not lower than fifth in the standings, has 33 wins so far and is quickly becoming the most productive driver financially speaking, earning more than $15 million (£16.2m) in prize money for the second year in a row, which is the most a driver a has ever made during a single season.

Of course, none of these would have been possible without a team of Hendrick's calibre. This year, between their four drivers, Hendrick Motorsports took 18 wins out of 36 races, and also dominated with the new Car of Tomorrow, which they put on Victory Lane in nine different events. No other team came even close to matching those numbers in 2007.

While in Formula One the battle for the title between the McLaren teammates was as tense as it could possibly get, in the NASCAR Nextel Cup the two Hendrick drivers contending for the championship happened to be great friends, but more importantly great teammates.

No, they didn't give an inch on the track when racing each other. They raced hard but clean, while showing how the top two drivers of a series can co-exist under the same roof while still getting it done for their boss.

Johnson chases down Gordon

Johnson was on a class of his own when the Chase for the Nextel Cup hit its second half, and not even Jeff Gordon's supreme consistency was enough to stop the No. 48 train.

The 32-year-old from El Cajon, California, renewed his champion's status in a record season by his own standards. He claimed ten wins along the way, which is twice the number he had last year, and matched that with the same consistency he had in 2006 to make himself unbeatable once again.

Johnson started the season crashing out of the Daytona 500, but recovered with back-to-back wins at Las Vegas and Atlanta. He then won at Martinsville and a few weeks later at Richmond, but had a few bad results in the middle of that which allowed Gordon to remain at the top of the standings.

The four-times Nextel Cup champion had three wins up to that point, and was on a great run. It looked like the Gordon of old; the one who got the better of Dale Earnhardt to set the NASCAR scene on fire. His professional and personal lives had found the perfect balance, and he looked set to take his fifth Cup title.

His teammate had a mid-season slump that saw him drop as far as ninth in the points after being second to Gordon for a number of weeks. He didn't see the chequered flag at Texas, Chicago or Indy, but then took two victories in the final two races before the Chase to break the tie with Gordon and start the final playoff at the top of the standings.

He made the most out of the new points system, which rewarded wins with bonus towards the Chase seeding, while for Gordon a massive 317 points gap, which would've been enough for him to become champion under the old cumulative points system, converted into a 20 point deficit to Johnson when the Chase started.

Gordon rapidly regained control of the standings by a small margin two races into the Chase, and followed that with back-to-back victories at Talladega and Charlotte. It seemed like the momentum was his, but he was probably a bit too conservative, while Johnson and his team were hitting their stride.

At Martinsville, Atlanta, Texas and Phoenix we saw the reigning Cup champion win in many different ways. Sometimes he and his star crew chief Chad Knaus played it safe, sometimes they went down a risky path, and at some races they were simply the fastest.

The bottom line is Johnson got the job done when it mattered, and annihilated his teammate's hopes before the season's finale.

Gordon scored 30 top tens during the season, a new record for the series. However, under the Chase format, even his most consistent season ever was not enough for him to take the title. Gordon is still chasing a Cup under the current playoff format, and this year Johnson showed him how it's done.

The reigning Cup champion set a new record for wins during the Chase, which was perhaps more crucial than Gordon's consistency. And in the end, just like in Formula One, the guy winning the most races took the championship. That's just what NASCAR wanted with some of their rule changes for this season, so... mission accomplished.

Dale Jr moves on

Dale Earnhardt Jr kept making the headlines all season long, even if his season on the track didn't live up to his fans' expectations. His year was marred by a number of engine failures, which prevented him from making the Chase. Also, for the first time since his debut season in the Nextel Cup, he failed to win a race during the year.

But NASCAR's most popular driver, as recently voted by fans for the fifth year in a row, kept the media busy since announcing in May that he was leaving DEI, the team his father had created and the one he had raced for all of his career.

His relationship with his stepmother and team-owner Teresa had been publicly deteriorating, and they couldn't agree on how to move forward.

A month later he announced he was joining Hendrick Motorsports, the team of one of his father's most coveted rivals, Jeff Gordon. The news was arguably the biggest of the year for NASCAR, but it didn't stop there. Next came the question of which number would he race with, and he had to answer it a million times before confirming in September that he had picked the No. 88.

Earnhardt is a marketing success and a very hot property for Hendrick Motorsports. Nobody can argue that. But it has come the time to translate all the hype surrounding him into success, and that means fighting for the championship.

He will equipment that can take him to the next level, and has been given what he wants by Rick Hendrick to build the 88 team around him.

Earnhardt finished the season in very low-key fashion, and was only 16th in the points in the end. He was not the best driver from DEI either, as Martin Truex Jr made the Chase and won the only race for their team when he claimed his maiden Cup victory at Dover. The split with DEI definitely affected Dale Jr's season, as the team will move into 2008 without their star driver.

Hendrick Motorsports proved to have perfect chemistry this year, and it will be very interesting to see what the impact will be on the organisation when they get Earnhardt in the mix. Everyone will be watching.

Montoya and the open-wheel gang

A year ago, many were still wondering why Juan Pablo Montoya had suddenly decided to ditch Formula One for NASCAR. Few really understood his thinking when he talked to Chip Ganassi following the Canadian Grand Prix last year.

But he liked what he saw, what he heard and was caught by the idea of facing a new challenge, even if he knew there were going to be more than a few bumps along the way.

Montoya's results from his first year at NASCAR's top level are probably not what he would have wanted. He won at Sonoma in his first road-course race in the Nextel Cup, but more impressive than that were his first race at Atlanta were he was fifth, his second place at Indy, and his two races at Martinsville, especially the second one where he led some laps and ran consistently among the top ten to finish eighth.

However, the clearest evidence of his success has been the massive migration of open-wheel drivers to NASCAR. Sam Hornish Jr was the first to try a stock car for size in the Busch Series even before this year, and then Patrick Carpentier finished second in the Busch Series race in Montreal a week before driving in the Nextel Cup at Watkins Glen.

Jacques Villeneuve followed with his first Truck Series races at Vegas before making his Cup debut at Talladega, where Dario Franchitti and Scott Speed raced against each other in an ARCA event. They all have committed to a long-term career in NASCAR after watching Montoya making an impact in his rookie season.

The very fact that Montoya has struggled as much as he has speaks highly of the level of a series that has been largely underestimated by drivers competing in other forms of racing around the globe.

Now, NASCAR is suddenly an interesting option for drivers worldwide, even more so for those in the US where the open-wheel series don't have a clear future. Christijan Albers, Christian Fittipaldi and even Cristiano da Matta were among those having a look around the paddock during the season finale at Homestead.

But while all of them probably see the chance of starting a great career in NASCAR and make a good living out of it, it remains to be seen how many will really become well-established drivers in the Sprint Cup in the long term.

For sure, they have more race experience and higher profile than an American kid coming from the dirt tracks, but team owners want to win, no matter what the driver's name is or where he comes from.

The sun has not risen yet

Toyota's debut season in the Nextel Cup was a tough one on the track, just as it most onlookers expected. Their line-up consisted of some very veteran drivers as well as a few rookies, but most of them were competing for start-up operations like Michael Waltrip Racing and Team Red Bull.

These teams showed great progress during the year, and had a few memorable moments. Michael Waltrip took pole position at the first CoT race at Talladega, and Brian Vickers led a good number of laps in the Coca Cola 600 in May, looking like a serious contender for victory.

However, it was Dave Blaney, from the more established Bill Davis Racing squad, who excelled as the best Toyota driver all year. He got the first pole for the manufacturer at Loudon, and then scored a third place finish at Talladega in October, which stands thus far as the best result in the Nextel Cup for Toyota.

He is also the only driver to have his Camry in the top 35 in the owners' standings by season's end, which will guarantee him a place in the field for the first five races of 2008.

However, Toyota's biggest accomplishment of the season took place off the track, when it was announced in September that they would join forces with former Nextel Cup champions Joe Gibbs Racing in 2008. The move is set to put Toyota in position to seriously contend for victories in their second year, drawing on the experience and talent of a group that has been recently at the top of the sport.

Mark Cronquist, Toyota's engine builder, is at work already to try to make the team's engines the best of the field. In terms of power, their units are already there with the top Chevys, Fords and Dodges, as the grid at Talladega showed this autumn when five Camrys started in the top six, even sweeping the front row.

Back in 2000, Chip Ganassi Racing became the leading Toyota team in Champ Car, coming off from a run of four consecutive championships. They won races, led a lot of laps but reliability issues plagued their season with defending champion Montoya. At least that kind of season can be expected from Joe Gibbs Racing next year, but odds say it could be better than that. If success comes, expect more teams to switch to Toyota.

CoT: Slower but safer

First impressions are always important, and NASCAR was wise enough to apply that to the race debut of their new Car of Tomorrow. A race at Bristol is always going to be a thrill and a very close contest, and that was the case again back in March when 43 Cars of Tomorrow raced for the first time in front of 160,000 fans at the half-mile-oval.

While celebrating on Victory Lane, race-winner Kyle Busch said the car was "terrible". "They suck," he added, making his feelings about the CoT as clear as possible. He epitomised what many drivers thought about the car at that stage, and what some of them probably still believe about its handling.

Drivers always want to go faster, brake deeper and accelerate quicker out of corners. They want to see the times drop, the speeds soar. But when they were given CoT for their first official test at Bristol, they found completely the opposite, and it was easy to sympathise with their feelings towards a car that NASCAR had spent years developing.

By that time, it looked very possible that NASCAR would anticipate the full switch to the CoT, given that there were no major dramas with it, despite the driver's general opinions.

Financially and logistically it made sense to run the full 2008 schedule with the CoT, as many teams, especially the small and mid-sized operations, struggled to keep up with the development and manufacturing of the current cars on top of that of the new ones this year.

The CoT is what it is, as NASCAR folk would say. It's the car that takes over the old model, and one that is definitely safer, even if it is not faster. The races did not change dramatically, although drivers had to learn how to use their new bumpers, especially on the short tracks. On the long ones, it was tougher to police the bump-drafting, as it was easier to make it work than with the old car.

Crew chiefs had to learn how to make their cars handle using bump-stops or 'packers' on the suspension, and the rear wing was set at maximum angle at almost every track.

It was more of a tool for officials to control the speeds of the cars at Talladega, were the CoT punched a bigger hole in the air than the current car, creating bigger tows although not necessarily more passing.

Goodyear will probably have a lot to do with tweaking the handling of the CoT by working on compounds and constructions that allow the car to be less tight in turns and more driver-friendly.

Hendrick Motorsports won nine out of the sixteen events were the car featured this year, which is close to the team's overall winning rate over the season. The good teams were good with the CoT, and those who struggled for most of the year, struggled just as much with the CoT.

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- The Autosport.com Team

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