Denny Hamlin’s

Hamlin finished a respectable 12th. But ‘respectable’ doesn’t win championships. Winning wins championships. And when seven of your eleven Sprint Cup Chase competitors take the top seven spots in a race, 12th will cost you severely.

Biffle’s convincing victory moved him up to within striking distance of the front runners at 85 points behind the new leader. Kansas has been very good to Biffle, who has finished in the top three in his last four consecutive races at the track. He led for sixty laps and seemed to be getting faster as the race went on.

Johnson continues to be superhumanly effective in Cup Chase races. In the sixty-three race history of the Sprint Cup, Johnson has finished first or second in an astonishing twenty-nine! That kind of dominance is what made him the winner of four consecutive championships and puts him in prime position for a fifth.

We’re only 3/10th of the way into the Chase, so it’s too early to start getting excited about leading the pack, especially when that lead is only eight points over the still- dangerous Hamlin. Johnson himself wisely observed after the race “It’s way too early to think about [leading in points], way, way too early… Again, it’s early. I’m not worried about who is leading the championship right now.”

Seven races to go and there’s still a whole lot of drama left in the 2010 Sprint Cup Championship.

Junior made a showing of it from then on, until he had the misfortune of pitting just before a caution came out, costing him a second lap.  He was already out of contention when a belt mysteriously fell off, cutting power to his vehicle and officially ending his day.

Are there any lessons to be learned from Junior’s bad day?  Well, of course, there are.

#1 – NASCAR is a fascinating combination of individual and team sport.  The driver is out there all alone, one man (and his machine) against other individual men (and, natch, their machines).  But that one man can’t do it alone.  The pit crew is absolutely essential to success in car racing.  That’s not just the moral of the Pixar movie Cars, it is true in real life.

#2 – The Price Chopper 400?  Really?  That sounds like the setting for the sequel to Taledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.  I know there’s big money in naming rights, but what’s next?  The Tidy Bowl 500?  (NOTE TO PRICE CHOPPER’S MARKETING PEOPLE: I watched the whole race, and I still don’t know what Price Chopper is.  Maybe you should rethink how you’re spending those marketing dollars.  Just a thought.)

#3 – Some days, you just have bad luck.  Ask Mario Andretti about being the best driver with the best car and the best crew.  He’ll tell you that some days that isn’t enough.  (DISCLAIMER:  I don’t actually know Mario Andretti.  Actual results may vary if you do ask him.  He may well say something more like “What are you doing on my lawn?  Go away, you freak.”)