It's over for the season. Denny Hamlin wins at Homestead Miami. Jimmie Johnson makes history by winning 4 back to back championships! Never before in the 61 years of Nascar, has anyone celebrated 4 years in a row as the champion!!! Amazing accomplishment. Mark Martin finished off the season in second place,not bad for the 50 year old driver of the #5 Kelloggs-Carquest sponsored team. Jeff Gordon finished the season in third place. That gives Rick Hendrick's team the top three positions in the points chase for the year! Hats off to them. the race at Homestead was good. Tony Stewart and Juan Pablo Montoya had a fierce battle in the middle of the race,bumping and banging back and forth. Juan Pablo Montoya was black flagged, and given a 2 lap penalty for wrecking Tony Stewart. I personally was happy to see Jimmie Johnson win the championship,(for the purpose of Nascar history),but i would have REALLY liked to have seen Mark Martin win the championship even more. So the season is over ,and now I'm a little sad. I guess i will have to find some other way to spend my "Sunday Nascar time". I suppose i will concentrate on finishing off the bathroom renovation i started way too long ago. I can't wait for the 2010 season to start!!! More exciting things will come next year. Petty motorsports will be driving FORD's!!! Well, until next February it will be a little sad at my house. i will be happy to sit in front of my T.V. to watch the first race next season,and once again hear the most famous words spoke in racing,-"GENTLEMEN, START YOUR ENGINES!!!"

 

Congrats J.J.! on nascar history!.....................Yeah, its gonna be boring on TV until we hear the words, "Gentlemen start your engines" and "Play ball!" first said in the spring.

 

i personally wish Mark Martin had won it. As i believe Cale Yarborough was and is a better driver than Jimmie Johnson. But congratulations are in order for the most dominant racing team in Nascar, Hendrick motorsports. I honestly can wait till the next season, as Nascar is becoming more pathetic by the year...no bumping at Talladega? honestly...

 

hopefully speed channel will play some dirt track races over the winter,that is the best racing anyhow. I watch nascar because there isn't any other weekly series to watch besides IRL or maybe formula one and I am not really into open wheel racing unless it is a modified or sprint car on dirt. Late models are my favorite to watch. Only about 4 months until the local dirt track opens for the season!!

 

DIRT TRACK ROCKS!

Revenge was the key word this weekend. The Denny Vrs Brad Battle was Saturday night with Kerslowski getting spun by Denny as payback from the week before.

Then Montoya with the fierce charge after Stewart, as payback for blocking him. Montoya rear ended him so hard his hood buckled.

After Stewarts comments about JR. from the week before, I had a slight grin about that one.

 

I'll congratulate JJ and the 48 team, but to be honest I don't think that under the chase format it is near as hard to win the championship than it was under a full 30+ schedule. Between the Hendrick org, Chad K and JJ they have shown the rest the way. It is also noteworthy that the RH org finished 1, 2 and 3rd in the standings.

 

I don't like the chase format for the reason that you stated. The champion should be the one that accumulates the most points throughout the entire season and not the guy that can do it in a ten race shootout. The person that's usually leading the points up to the shootout is really getting shafted when he has to give up all his gains to the next eleven competitors behind him. I don't see how nascar thinks this is fair and if it's "for the fans" they're wrong.

 

IF they want to have the points chase for the top 12,fine,but those guys should be on a point system by themselves,that would keep the points closer and have more drivers with a chance to win it at the last race. Now if you finish 43rd,you get 43rd place points,where if they had their own points system,you would get whatever 12th place points gets and have a chance to bounce back the next week. THAT would keep the fans interested until the final race. I didn't even bother watching the last 3 races because I knew it would be a miracle for anybody but Johnson to win.

 

My wife Heather and I, hope to be able to see a race at Phoenix in 2010. we live in Maple Ridge, British Columbia Canada. its about 30 miles east of Vancouver B.C. and about 30 miles north of Blaine Washington. For us it is a big trip to come see a Nascar race. We went to Daytona in July 5 2008, for the Coke Zero 400. this past March 1 2009, we were in Las Vegas for the Shelby 427. We are big Nascar fans. I hope our plans to see a race in 2010 come true. i wish we had the time to go to Las Vegas for Nascar week in a few weeks, but i'm not able to go to far right now as i injured my foot/ankle at work and now i'm on the mend from that. the points chase is fine with me. i really like the pit crew competions mid season too, they are great to watch on speed channel. One day i would like to see the new Nascar Hall of Fame as well.

 

That's cool,my buddies and I might hop in the RV and head to Darlington next year.

 

What really changes? Really? For example this year, yes, Tony Stewart was leading the points going into the chase and then he never was a threat once the chase began. The points system acheives what it states, it awards CONSISTANCY. It's this very thing that gets you into the chase to begin with.

Everyone knows the rules of the game before the game began so nobody got "shafted". If somebody can correct me if I'm wrong but how many championships would the 48 team would have won if we still had the old points system?

I didn't like the "new" system when it first started but lets look at the facts, once the last 10 races of the year come about, when in the old point system did 12 drivers have a hope in hell of winning the championship?

 

Congrats to JJ and the Hendrick organization. Hard to argue with 4 in a row. Personally I don't care for the chase format and never have but it is just one more of many issues NASCAR is struggling with. Nascar, in search of growth at any cost, has lost its soul.

 

Nascar is a poor watered down version of racing, it's more a circular soap opera than anything else.
Give me a real dirt or tarmac rally (except they changed the rules so Subaru can't compete), 24hr LeMans, Sebring, Nurburgring, or any of the other races that reward the combination of technical advancement and driver ability.
Last race I saw that had the same car for everyone was IROC- They were really successful after auctioning off all their tools and equipment last year.

 

Thank the media for that. If any of the "Sports Car" series where half as popular as NASCAR is, a media circus would soon follow.


Two words. Hendrick Motorsports.

Perfect example of that in NASCAR.

 

COT- Perfect example of why I don't watch Nascar anymore. Cars all have to fit the same template, all the engines have to fall within this very narrow group of standards that make them all essentially the same, and not even remotely production engines (EX: Toyota has never had a carbureted pushrod V8 in their history of building engines), suspension setup is limited to design rules, and so on. The only variety is in the badging stickers and the paint color.
Nascar used to be about who could build the best car and then find someone bold enough to pilot it. It drove many advancements in technology, including synchronized transmissions and disk brakes. Now, they limit teams to using 50s technology, and any time someone figures out how to go a bit faster, they change the rules to cut the speed back. It's the opposite of what it once was.