Homestead Observations

Thoughts, observations and a few questions following Sunday's season-ending Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway:

• Even though Jimmie Johnson didn't have to win Sunday's race to secure his first Nextel Cup title, his team did have to deliver a nearly flawless race. It almost did. The only miscue was a loose lug nut, which forced Johnson to drive from the back of the field to the front.

But by now, fans have become so accustomed to Johnson racing from the back of the field that they've come to expect it.

• Before building the Homestead track in the mid-'90s, original owner Ralph Sanchez claimed he wanted it to be the best track in the country. So he asked his good friend, the great Emerson Fittipaldi, which track Fittipaldi thought was the greatest and the Brazilian open wheel star replied, "the Indianapolis Motor Speedway."

So Sanchez built a 1½-mile version of the Brickyard. It worked well for the Indy cars that raced there when it first opened, but not for stock cars. The track was reconfigured and the corners were rounded off, but the track still was flat. Then it was changed once more a few years ago. This present incarnation, with variable banking that allows for multiple racing grooves, may finally have accomplished Sanchez's original goal.

• OK, I'll admit it. I didn't think David Gilliland would be this good. His performance early in the race, when he was running in the top five, must have put a huge smile on team owner Robert Yates' face. Yates is banking a good deal of his team's future on Gilliland. At this point, Yates looks like a genius with a sure thing in his pocket.

With Gilliland running more Busch races, along with his full Cup schedule next season, this 30-year-old from California will only get better.

• It was good to see Greg Biffle running so well again. However, from their postrace press conference quotes, both Biffle and team owner Jack Roush unfairly seemed to throw departing crew chief Doug Richert under the bus. It will be interesting to see what Richert's next assignment will be, or if it even will be at Roush Racing.

• David Stremme's 11th-place equals his best finish in a points race all season. The other was at New Hampshire in July. It's sometimes hard to see what Chip Ganassi sees in Stremme, who might be the luckiest driver in Nextel Cup racing.

• Stremme's Ganassi teammate, "rookie" Juan Pablo Montoya, had a to-be-expected debut until his spectacular fiery wreck late in the race. Montoya is a fast learner, and the more laps he runs in a stock car, the better he'll get.

Two things still worry me: Will Ganassi give him the cars he needs to succeed? Or will the Colombian get frustrated or bored and give up too quickly?

• Did you notice that Joe Nemechek's worst finish in the last seven races was a 20th at Martinsville and that two of those finishes were top-10s? Prior to that, he had finished 20th or better only seven times. Could it mean that new team owner Bobby Ginn is putting his money where his mouth is and giving his team the proper equipment to be in a position to score some top-10s on a regular basis?

Ironically, Nemechek finished 13th Sunday. He'll be driving the No. 13 for Ginn next season.

• Another driver who ended his season on a high note is Martin Truex Jr. Truex was the preseason favorite for the rookie title, but he fell victim to his team's tough transition from being a Busch team to a Cup team. Truex is a very smart and highly competitive driver who has more than a dozen race wins and two titles in the Busch Series on his resume. He'll be a real contender in '07.

• Note to Robby Gordon: First of all, congratulations on winning the Baja 1000. Nice work. By the way, what in the world were you thinking when racing hard with the leaders while a lap down and already in position to be the Lucky Dog? Could you imagine the reaction if your unfortunate wreck had taken out Johnson?

• The award for the best turnaround this season goes to Scott Riggs and the No. 10 Evernham Motorsports team which failed to qualify at the season opener. They finished the season with a front-row start and ran in the top 10 nearly the entire race before finishing seventh.

Any one (or all) of the Evernham Motorsports' trio of Riggs, Kasey Kahne and Elliott Sadler could make the Chase next season.

• Despite having won five other Nextel Cup titles, the strain of winning his sixth clearly showed on Rick Hendrick's face with five laps to go. The television camera caught Hendrick as he was rubbing his eyes and temples as if to soothe a pounding headache.

• Sunday's race marked the end of the NBC broadcast contract with NASCAR. Good riddance! The peacock network single-handedly did more harm to NASCAR than any other broadcast partner in the sport's history by permanently alienating a good deal of the casual race-viewing audience with its incessant commercial breaks.

It took a dedicated race fan to be able to stick with, much less follow, the race through NBC's steady pattern of running five minutes of commercials between every five minutes of racing action.

• This season's final Hard Luck of the Race Award goes to Kyle Busch, who just can't seem to catch a break.

• Kevin Harvick's quest to be the first driver to win both the Busch and Nextel Cup titles in one season fell a bit short. Nevertheless, it's easy to expect Harvick will be back in the thick of the Chase again next season – with a vengeance.

• Won't you be shocked if Jamie McMurray doesn't appear on the top of everyone's list of "Biggest Disappointments" for 2006?

• Have we seen the final Cup race by Cal Wells' team? I sure hope not. Best of luck to driver Travis Kvapil, who moves on to race for Jack Roush in the truck series.

• By the way, Scott Wimmer, who will be driving a partial Cup schedule for RCR next season, finished 12th.

Postscript

Had Jimmie Johnson not won the Nextel Cup championship after winning both of the sport's biggest races in one season (Daytona and Indy) and then fighting back from a horrible start to the Chase, it easily could have been a fatal blow to this team, which has struggled through adversity for the past three seasons.

Having been the bridesmaid and never a bride, Johnson now can claim his place in history as the 2006 Nextel Cup champion.

And despite its apparent shortcomings, the fact that Johnson's team won the title in the manner in which they did – by having to come from behind and deliver their best performances at the right time – brings into question any possible changes that may be made to the Chase format going forward.

Hopefully NASCAR will only slightly modify the structure of what easily has been the most successful championship formula in the history of auto racing.