The NASCAR season seemed to be over just in time to give thanks this year and that’s just fine with me.
The close points battle was exciting, but the season seem to drag on for me knowing that odds were in favor of one of the three Hendrick Racing teams coming away from the year with the Chase trophy.
The season ends later these days it seems. There needs to be a few more days between the season-finale and the Thanksgiving stuffing. There’s just not enough time to devote a weekend to following the last-minute shenanigans of the last weekend of racing and still take care of that long “Honey Do” list that accompanies the traditional serving of the turkey.
Jimmie Johnson’s team scored a clean sweep of the major Nextel Cup events this year. Johnson won the season opening Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400 at Indy. He also scored top-ten finishes in 24 of the 36 point events.
Johnson’s 2006 scorecard credits him with five wins, one pole, 13 top-five and 24 top-ten finishes. Johnson only failed to finish one race this year. He would have been the point champion under the old point’s formula that was abandoned three years ago in favor of the ten-race playoff.
Under that old point system Tony Stewart would have been ranked fourth, instead of 11th. Matt Kenseth would have still been second and Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick would have still been in the top-five.
Kasey Kahne, who finished eighth in the Chase, gets the honors of having the most wins and poles. The No. 9 team claimed six checkered flags, six poles, 12 top-five and 19 top-ten finishes. Kahne may have been able to capture the big prize except for the six events he failed to finish due to crashes or engine trouble.
Kurt Busch also won six Bud Pole Awards, but he was never able to win from the pole. Kahne won three of the six races where he started on the inside of the front row.
Robby Gordon had the most “DNF”s marked on his scorecard for 2006. Gordon failed to finish nine of the 36 events and he finished 30th in the point standings.
Tony Stewart didn’t make it to the Chase, but he still beatin’ a path to the bank. The only driver to earn more prize money than Stewart was Jimmie Johnson. Johnson collected $8,909,143 for the season. Stewart’s prize money totaled $7,282,920 for the five wins, 15 top-five and 19 top-ten finishes for the No. 20 Chevrolet.
All of the awards will be officially presented the evening of December 1st in New York. The event will be broadcast on TNT.
Georgia Boys: Reed Sorenson started 11th and finished 16th in his final Nextel Cup race with a yellow bumper. That yellow paint on the back of Sorenson’s No. 41 Dodge will be gone next year as he graduates out of NASCAR’s rookie class.
The Peachtree City driver finished 24th in the point standings for the season. Reed scored one top-five and five top-ten finishes in the 36-race season. He collected 40 bonus points for leading 91 laps of competition in eight different races. His best finish of the year was the fifth-place run he claimed in Michigan.
Sorenson was out of the Busch Series race at Homestead-Miami early. Engine trouble sidelined the team after just 43 laps and Sorenson finished 42nd. He was still able to stay in the top-ten on the Busch point chart. His five top-five and 14 top-ten finishes in the Busch events left him in tenth place in the Busch point standings.
Reed earned over $4.2 million in prize money from the Nextel and Busch races he ran this year.
Bill Elliott was in the No. 00 at Homestead, but his car-owner Michael Waltrip failed to qualify his NAPA-sponsored “hotrod,” as Waltrip likes to refer to his car these days. Elliott used a Champion’s provisional to start the race and he collected 25th-place pay for his efforts.
Awesome Bill ran ten Nextel Cup events this year. His best finish was the 19th-place he earned in the season-opening Daytona 500. That was his only top-20 finish for the year, but the Dawsonville native collected $1,056,130 in prize money to claim on his 2006 Income Tax form.
Atlanta’s Mike Garvey competed in four of the 2006 Nextel Cup races. He ran the California, Martinsville, Texas and Pocono events. He was unable to finish any higher than 38th in any of the races.
David Ragan, of Unadilla, and Bill Lester, of Cobb County, were in two Nextel runs during the past season. Ragan raced at Martinsville (finished 25th) and Dover (finished 42nd). Lester made his runs in Atlanta (finished 38th) and Michigan (finished 32nd).
Bill Lester finished the Craftsman Truck Series out with a front-row start in the Homestead-Miami race. Bill started second and finished 11th in the 134-lap race. Lester was unable to score a top-ten finish in 2006 and he is ranked 20th in the truck point standings.
David Ragan finished the year out with a 24th-place ranking in the truck points. Ragan ran 19 of the 25 truck races during the season scoring one pole, one top-five and eight top-ten finishes. He led laps in two of the races and collected more than $206,000 in prize money for his rookie run in the trucks.
Ragan ran three Busch events and will be a contender for the Rookie of the Year Award for the 2007 Nextel Cup season.
Cherokee County’s Chase Miller is the one of the newest faces on the Craftsman Truck tour. Miller’s stellar performances in a few ARCA/ReMax races convinced Bobby Hamilton the teen would be a great choice to fill the seat of Hamilton’s No. 4 Dodge.
Miller scored one top-ten finish in the eight races he ran in the trucks. He is signed to run the full season for Hamilton next year.
David Odell, of Gwinnett County, and Ron Young, of Conyers, were the only other Georgia drivers making races in the NASCAR elite divisions. Odell started three Busch events and Young was able to run a pair of the Busch races.
High Speed TV:
Friday November 24
7:00 a.m. NASCAR beyond The Wheel—Speed
Saturday November 25
11:30 a.m. Seven Days (Mark Martin)—Speed
Sunday November 26
12:00 p.m. NHRA Awards—ESPN2
2:00 p.m. Bristol Mother’s Car Show—ESPN2
8:00 p.m. The Speed Report—Speed
9:00 p.m. Wind Tunnel—Speed Channel
10:00 p.m. NASCAR Drivers Non-Stop—ESPN2
The Allan Vigil Ford 120 will return December 2nd on Newstalk 750 WSB Radio and www.wsbradio.com. For more race information visit our Fastcar Newsdesk at www.captainherb.net.
