So, what did we manage to accomplish at Texas this past week? Well, not much.
There was the bursting of the bubble that had Jeff Gordon as an actual Cup contender. When his tire blew, when his car slammed into the fence, when he left with just a couple of points to his credit, that fantasy came to an end. To be honest, even if he had ran tenth, it would have mattered little.
Jimmie Johnson finished first. Matt Kenseth finished fourth. What the rest did was of little consequence at Texas. The seven point lead Johnson has over Kenseth can be made up at Phoenix and Homestead. The 40 point deficit faced by the now third place Kevin Harvick can not. For Johnson, it marked his 66th career win and, most importantly, his 6th of the season. That leaves him just one back of Kenseth in that tie breaker category, should it come to that.
As for the other events from last Sunday, we had Gordon kill his car by hitting the wall. Kyle Busch flattened out his right side earlier, yet still finished 13th. Carl Edwards blew up just past the mid-point to claim 37th. Dale Earnhardt Jr and Joey Logano finished a distant second and third on the day. Other than that, they turned left a lot and we had a couple of debris cautions and another to clean up some oil. For excitement, I did check out some of the NFL action when I had caught up to the live feed on my PVR. Still, it was better than watching soccer, though just barely.
Rating Texas – 5/10 – I do not really have to explain this, do I?
As for Phoenix, Kenseth has run a hundred more laps in two extra races (22 – 20). Jimmie has 4 wins, including a string of three straight, compared to Matt’s one. Johnson is up 13 to 5 in Top Fives and 932 – 212 in laps led. Five Time’s average finish is 6.4, Kenseth is 17.2. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that Jimmie has the advantage this weekend. Enjoy the week.
