What was a a boring show, ended with some drama…..It was unbelievable the cheer from the

crowd as Jimmie Johnson slid through the infield..Reminded me of days when Jeff Gordon was winning just about everything in the Ray Evernham days..Then Busch (Kyle) and his teammate

Denny Hamlin stirred up the pot , opening the door for big brother Kurt..

  I was very happy to see another new winner in this event…..

  I have a theory as to why  NASCAR races have shown a decline…To me , there are too many

pre-race shows…….Speed has a 2 hour show with Jimmy , Kenny, and its bunch…ESPN has a hour or so show on Sunday morning………Plus, whatever network is covering the race , has another 60 plus minutes as well…Way too much of hearing the same BS news over and over……The only station that should have some short pre-race show is the one broadcasting the race..

 Alright, for anyone who cares, I shall be moving on into the wild blue.  Now, don’t get all discouraged, kids!  I’m moving onto the main site.  That’s right, the good good grand people at www.playerpress.com (the mothership to this, Hotpass dot tv) have given me the opportunity to write for the main site, for which I am more than grateful.  So, for now, I bid hotpass.tv adieu.  From this point on, you can all find me residing and writing at my new home.  A good day to each and every one of you, and please check in there frequently. 

Well, you know you’ve come a long way when your sport and your champion are featured on The Onion.  America’s Finest News Source, known for it’s many pokes and prods at any subject in the world, numerous books, and now a movie, took a stab at Jimmie Johnson and his championship in this article.  The writeup features just the right amout of sexual humor to elicit some good natured laughing, and just enough stereotyping to rub me the right way.  There’s even a great Dale Earnhardt line in there that got an out-loud laugh from me.  Beautifully done, guys.  I love The Onion.

As we all head into Thanksgiving, I thought I would pass along this video that I stumbled across on Youtube, featuring a slideshow of the champ.  While I typically do not like the Youtube slideshow, this one is decent, as the background music is totally funky fresh.

And, if that funk gets you all antsy in your pantsy, maybe this video will give you something to ponder.

It’s in the record books.  Jimmie Johnson is only the second driver in NASCAR history to win three championships in a row.  I watched all season long, wrote about the season since March here at hotpass.tv (tell your friends!), and since Sunday, have read all of the same articles that many of you have.  The amount of backlash I’ve seen in the press and blogs this week has really astounded me.  I understand that NASCAR, from the fan’s perspective, is quite the polarizing sport.  Everyone has their favorites and everyone wants their favorites to win.  Hell, I’ll go as far as saying that I want my least favorites to lose in embarrassing fashion at times.  But, this week’s news reports ranged from slight jabs at Johnson to full-on bashes.  Let’s review some of my favorites.

This one is interesting.  Fox came out with this top 10 list of the best three-peats (and beyond in some cases) in sports history.  This is just a starter, but actually fairly interesting.  Johnson ranks number 7 behind such legendary championship runs as the Chicago Bulls NBA three-peat, the Yankees run from 1998-2000, and Tiger Woods unbelievable run of U.S. Amateur Championships (what can I say, I am a big golf fan).  Here’s the good news….at least Johnson beat out the stupid New York Islanders’ championships from the early 80’s, and they put him above Michael Shumacher’s F1 Championships from early 2000’s.

Another article from Fox and another Tiger Woods comparison.  Sweet Jebus!  Just let the guy have his freaking day in the sun!  Quit listing all of the people that Johnson isn’t as good as and stop with the who is a better NASCAR driver.  The guy won three championships.  Just let him have it.

Here’s a great article, referencing Babe Ruth’s home run record that was broken by Roger Maris, but in a longer baseball season in which Ruth had hit his 60 home runs.  This one says that since the Chase format wasn’t part of NASCAR when Yarborough won his three-in-a-row, that Johnson’s success should suffer the same ridiculousness that was tried to pass onto Maris.  Yes, please, attempt to knock Johnson down for his feat.  And this article comes from Jerry Bonkowski, who is a columnist that I really enjoy reading.  Mr. Bonkowski, this time, you are an ass.

To wrap up these Jimmie bashing articles, I came across this blog post from this guy that is just silly.  While it may be mathematically true that with old points system that Carl Edwards would have won the championship, we don’t run the old points system.  I could come up with all sorts of stupid stats myself that would back up all of my crazy ideas as well, but I try to do this crazy thing that is called living in the present.  Otherwise, I’d still be living in Alabama explaining to every moron in a bar why the Allman Brothers were better than Skynyrd.  Again, arguments that don’t matter.

Finally, I’m going to link to one final article, from ol’ DW.  I enjoy DW’s sentiments on most things and I appreciate hearing from someone in the NASCAR world that really does know what he’s talking about as far as all subjects racing go.  Meanwhile, if you’ll look back, I have been known to hate his speech patterns and his obliteration of proper grammar.  I link to this article, again, to show how someone can hint at the fact that they don’t think that Johnson is the best driver of all time without sounding like a total jerk.  But, I will say this to DW and the people at Fox Sports…someone needs to get off their ass and do some proofreading on these articles.  I know you can’t police his nearly intolerable English during broadcasts, but someone over there has to know the difference between “Dominant” and “Dominate”.

Here’s the good news.  First, I have a lot on my mind as far as off-season articles go and I’m really looking forward to getting that work done.  And, best of all…the first skeleton of a schedule has been released for next year.  Bud Shootout in less than three months.  Huzzah!

Here’s the good news.  The Chase is still on and will continue until at least early evening on Sunday.  The probability of Homestead being a lame duck race is quite high, though.  Phoenix should be a pretty good race, though.  It’s a one mile track, with different degrees of banking between turns 1 and 2 to 3 and 4.  Typically, the guys do enjoy running here, and some of the Chasers run very well here.  Jimmie Johnson has won at this track previously, but so have Earnhardt, Harvick, Jeff Gordon, and Jeff Burton.

While I do feel that Jimmie Johnson does deserve to win the Chase at this point, after he has put on a veritable driving class over the last 8 race, I would like to see the Chase at least go on another week, without Johnson clinching.  I will admit that this is purely out of selfish reasons as a fan, but Homestead would at least be watchable if there was some form of mathematical chance that Edwards could topple Johnson.  But, Johnson is the defending champion at Phoenix from the spring race, so I’m not getting my hopes up too high.

Qualifying starts in a few hours.  But, it is to note that the pole sitter has only won the race in Phoenix 1 time in the track’s 20 year NASCAR history.  Luckily, this week’s qualifying has no chance of getting rained out.  I have just checked the atlas and it appears that Phoenix is in the middle of the desert, so I feel confident in the no rain prognostication.

Meanwhile, in other NASCAR news, it was reported earlier this week that there are possible merger talks going on between DEI and the Ganassi teams right now, which I could see benefiting both teams greatly.  Being a fan of Martin Truex, and a HUGE fan of Juan Pablo Montoya, I’d love to see these guys join up and see if they could both excel in the process.

Speaking of  JP Montoya, I find it ridiculous that there have been no repercussions from NASCAR after David Gilliland intentionally wrecked him at Texas last week. I can’t imagine what JP had to say behind closed doors.  I’ll bet it was fantastic, but I like saucy language.

Also, I’m going to throw up a link here to A.J. Allmendinger’s latest post to Yahoo’s NASCAR site right here.  I think it is just too damned interesting to get an insider’s view of what it is like to search for employment as a NASCAR driver, especially one that is such a solid up-and-coming talent as Allmendinger. Plus, being in the middle of my own job hunt, I really appreciate the way he handles his viewpoint of the job search, as he obviously realizes that he as a NASCAR driver is going to make much more money than those of us that are regular ol’ working schlubs.  This writing thing is great, but if I could get paid NASCAR driver salary for it, it’d be stupendous!

I’ve read countless articles in the past couple of weeks about how a change needs to be made to the Chase points system.  I mean, how else could Jimmie Johnson be in 1st place in the points, right?  Obviously, Johnson couldn’t be THAT good, right?  Wrong.  Face it, the guy is the consummate professional, on and off the track.  He’s the best driver in NASCAR and is one of the best guys the sport could have when the boys aren’t driving left all day and the cameras and mics are on individuals.    

Writers and fans keep looking for a way to blame the current Chase points set-up as the reasoning behind Johnson being so dominant in the post-season.  In actuality, some players, no matter what sport, work much better in the clutch than others.  How many times have you seen a completely dominant team hit the post-season in their respective sport, only to falter immediately.  Hell, did anyone see the National League Division Series this year where the Cubs, the best team in the National League, went down to the Dodgers without a fight.  These things just happen and some teams will just choke.    

It happens this same way in NASCAR.  Throughout the regular season, no one would have thought that Kyle Busch would not go onto win the championship.  It would have been the dumbest bet in the world to wager against him being the champion this year.  Yet, the young kid hit the post-season and his team choked.      

While I agree that there are some issues with the current incarnation of the NASCAR Post-Season (my rants on the 1.5 mile tracks serves as a prime example), people just can not discount the fact that the team of Johnson and Chad Knaus is an unbeatable team, that look forward to the post-season where they really shine.  Some teams are going to be choke-artists.  Johnson’s team have just proven to be Chase artists.

That’s right, Martinsville is coming up on Sunday, and this promises to be the last good race of the season.

With his win last week in Charlotte., Jeff Burton solidified his place in the Chase. The guy had been steadily running throughout the Chase thus far, staying in the top 10 for each race. But, with some spectacular driving on Saturday night, he moved into the winnner’s circle which is a place where he belongs.

Jimmie Johnson, on the other hand, still leads the points by about 70 right now over Burton. Johnson has won a single race thus far and has finished in the top 10 in each of the races. Plus, he won both races at Martinsville in 2007, so he obviously knows what he’s doing there. He definitely has the team to win the fall race again.

Meanwhile, Greg Biffle keeps on fighting. That guy won’t give up. Even after his 24th place finish in Talladega, he and his team rallied to put together a strong car and a 7th place finish last week. He remains only 86 points out of the lead, though he needs another win or, preferably five.

We’ll see if Johnson can get back into position to win on Sunday, or if Burton and Biffle can hold him off and cut the points lead down some. Though, I doubt if anyone can top the current leader by slowly chipping away at him. Time is running short for the Chasers.

Short track racing brings out the best and worst in people. While the hot dogs in Martinsville are the big draw (wait and see what I do here), donuts seem to be the choice for the 43 drivers who will race on Sunday in the Tums Quikpak 500 (see kids, that’s wordplay!).  Tickets are still available.

Congrats on the big win, Jimmie Johnson.  Now, onto the complaints.

These tracks are continuously boring.  I’ve bitched about them all season long, and they just keep on boring me each time one pops up in the season.  Between Kansas, Texas, Lowes, Chicagoland, etc…, I’ve had plenty to complain about as far as these tracks go all season.

To begin, the racing is just a borefest.  Passing is fairly non-existant.  If someone gets out in the front of a pack of cars, that front-runner will take off by getting that clean air out front, and anyone attempting to catch-up with the leader will just have to hope that there is a car malfunction.  There is so little on-track action.  When the majority of your action comes from pit lane and not the actual track, then there is a big, boring problem here.

At least we got about 10 seconds of fireworks on Sunday afternoon in Kansas.  Carl Edwards attempted to utilize his old dirt racing chops, and drove as hard as he could into the final turns on the final lap to get a run on Jimmie Johnson.  Edwards flew by Johnson on the inside in a triumphant pass, only to careen into the wall, as that car going that speed could not hold that track, giving Johnson the go-ahead win.  Regardless, that’s one of those “out of your seat” moments that made the race fun at the very end.  It was great to have an exciting end, though, otherwise Sunday’s race could have been one to skip.

Luckily, next week, the boys take it to Talladega, which I absolutely love, and before the season is over, we get to see some racing at a half-miler (Martinsville) and the mile tri-oval in Arizona (Phoenix).  Unfortunately and otherwise, we’ve got some weeks where we will see the non-stop snores and bores of racing at Lowes, stupid Atlanta, snoozefest Texas, and we’ll wind the whole season up at the final 1.5 miler, Homestead.

By the way, if anyone at Homestead is listening…you cats need to change your freaking logo.  That thing is way too 1989.

Look everybody, I’m gonna put my wayfarers on and listen to Rick Astley.

It has always been wondered by people whether or not Nostradamus was the prognosticator he was billed to have been.  Yes, there have been some events in history that have matched up with his well-veiled and artsy prose in at least some basic ways.  Well, maybe I should have chosen my words better, and not made a probable Top-12 list as to the Chase at the end of the season, as I am nowhere near how I thought the Chase would be at this moment.  That Greg Biffle has really come on strong and I did not think he had it in him.  Also, who would have seen Kyle Busch having had all of the troubles that have caused him to have absolutely no chance of winning the championship. I promise all of you, that as much as I had hoped to be the master forecaster for the Chase, that alas, it is not to be.

The Monster Mile caused a lot of problems for the Chasers.  Denny Hamlin, Earnhardt Jr., and Kyle Busch fell out of the top positions.  Harvick, on the other hand, moved up 5 places which has him going up the charts equal to the 5 spots that Jr. fell.  This chase has been crazy so far.

Kyle Busch must HATE the current Chase format.  While I do like the current set-up fairly well, I do see why Busch has all the right in the world to think the system is completely bunk.  There really should be no way that a driver who has run so dominantly all season long is now with no chance of winning the championship.

Kansas is coming up this coming weekend.  A return to the typical 1.5 mile D-Oval, which promises to be much more of a bore-fest.  But, maybe we’ll have some other fireworks as we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks to make the day interesting.

On one final note, David Reutimann was putting together a pretty solid run yesterday before having some issues in the pits towards the end of the day.  And, while paying attention to what he was doing on the track, it dawned on me that he really does resemble a couple of famous people.  So, with the school year back up and running, I decided to put together my own very simple mathematical equation to solve what David Reutimann (x) is, and I have gone ahead and submitted the best answer to said equation.  It goes something like this:

Famous Person 1 + Famous Person 2 = X

  John Ritter

PLUS

  Zach Braff

EQUALS

  David Reutimann!