THIS WEEK’S STORY LINES

1.   JIMMIE JOHNSON WINS THIRD CHASE IN A ROW:

2.   CARL EDWARDS WINS AT HOMESTEAD:

3.   DEI-GANASSI NAMED EARNHARDT-GANASSI RACING:

4.   EARNHARADT-GANASSI RACING RUNS CHEVYS IN ’09: (espn)

5.   STEWART MOVES OVER TO STEWART-HAAS RACING:

6.   CREW CHIEFS NAMED FOR STEWART-HAAS RACING: (TSC/SHR PR)

7.   NASCAR BANS ALL TESTING IN 2009: (winstonsalemjournal)

8.   CALE YARBOROUGH ABSENT FROM HOMESTEAD: (orlando sentinal)

The 2008 NASCAR racing season has come to close.  The running of the Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Raceway has ended with excitement and a place in the record books of NASCAR.  The winner of the race, Carl Edwards, won it in a dominating fashion, however that was only one half of the story.  Edwards attained his ninth win of the season, the most of any driver this year.  He also led the most laps enroute to the win.  Unfortunately, “Cousin Carl” couldn’t overcome the 141 point disadvantage in this last race.  He did, however cut a significant amount of points off from Jimmie Jonhson’s lead!  Edward’s surge over the last four races was short of a miracle in the NASCAR ranks!!

The real story of the weekend was Jimmie Johson’s third consecutive championship!.  That feat had only been accompolished once in NASCAR’s 60 year history.  Johnson got himself in the history books along side Cale Yarborough as the only other driver to score three championships in a row.  The consecutive championships won by these two individuals were exactly 30 years apart!!

COMMENTARY

At last, you say, I can finally figure out the title, the picture, and their relationship to NASCAR!!  Well let me tie them together anyway for you.   A few years ago Tom Wolfe wrote a book titled “The Right Stuff”.  It was a book chronicaling the beginnings of supersonic flight in the 1940′s and 1950′s, the brave adventerous pioneering pilots involved, and the teamwork that it took to overcome the dauting tasks that was before them.  There were heros, rivalries, brilliant people, and hard partiers, but the common theme was TEAMWORK!!  Everyone would sacrifice whatever it took to accompolish the goals given them.  You might remember or recognize some of those men, Chuck Yeager, Scott Crossfield, Bob Hoover, Neil Armstrong, John Glen, Buzz Aldrin, Deke Slayton, and James Lovell just to mention a few names.  They all hold their place in aviation history.

Racing has its men that have “The Right Stuff” also.  Try on a few of these names on for size, Lee Petty, Richard Petty, Fireball Roberts, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, Marvin Paunch, Buddy Baker, Benny Parsons, Bobby Allison, Ned Jarrett, Darrell Waltrip, and last but not forgotten Dale Earnhardt, Sr (in the staute above).  These men were just some of the brave pioneers of NASCAR.  They, too, were heros, rivals, hard partiers, and yes they were brilliant in their own way!  They were focused on accompolishing the dauting tasks of winning races and being better than their competitors day in and day out!  They realized that it took TEAMWORK to succeed!!! 

 Well add one more name to the history books.  What Jimmie Johnson and the #48 Lowes HMS Chevy accompolished in the last three years has cemented their place in the NASCAR history books!!  That whole team sacrificed everything to be the best when the going got tough!!  Winning three consecutive championships put them in the same sentence as Cale Yarborough.  Until Sunday there was only one driver and team that could lay claim to three championships in a row. 

MOVE OVER CALE, HERE COMES JIMMIE!!!