Four stories worth following at Texas this weekend

Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas – For the fifth year, Texas Motor Speedway will host the eighth of 10 NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup playoff races, and for the fourth year, Jimmie Johnson hopes to leave Texas one race closer to a championship.

That's the biggest story this weekend at TMS, but not the only story.

Here's a look at some of the story lines to watch for this weekend:

1. Going for four straight

By Sunday night, we should have a much better idea if Johnson is going to wrap up his record fourth straight Sprint Cup points championship. With three races remaining, Johnson holds a 184-point lead over Mark Martin and a 192-point advantage over teammate Jeff Gordon.

The bad news for Martin and Gordon is that Johnson likes Texas. He's had a win and nine top-10 finishes in 12 races at the mile-and-a-half track with an average finish of 8.5 – better than any other Chase driver. If Johnson can average a top-10 finish in the final three races, he'll lock up the title.

2. Going for four straight, Part II

While it doesn't compare to what Johnson is trying to accomplish, Kyle Busch has a streak of his own on the line today at TMS. Busch has won the last three Nationwide races at the track.

And starting position hasn't mattered. Busch won from the pole last spring, but at the 2008 spring race, he came from near the back of the field, starting 31st.

3. How do you define boring?

Every year, the critics come out at Texas, calling it boring racing, as the cars tend to spread out around one of NASCAR's fastest tracks. The last two years, since the debut of the safer, less aerodynamic Car of Tomorrow, the criticism has ramped up.

Maybe there's some down time during long green-flag runs, but the track has a knack for producing excitement in the closing laps.

Five of the 10 races have been decided by 41-hundredths of a second or less. Elliott Sadler won the 2004 race by 0.028 seconds and Jeff Burton passed Matt Kenseth on the final lap in the spring of 2007 for the win.

4. TMS success

If you're looking for the favorites in Sunday's Sprint Cup Dickies 500, start with the obvious: the Chase drivers. Carl Edwards is in ninth place and out of the title hunt, but of the 12 Chase drivers, Edwards has won more races (3) and led more laps (476) than any of them at Texas.

In all, the Chase drivers have a combined 64 top-10s in 17 races at the track, and eight of them have a win. Brian Vickers is the only Chase driver without a top-10, despite starting from the pole in the 2006 fall race.

If you're picking a Toyota driver to win, don't get your hopes up. No Toyota has finished better than fifth in a TMS Cup race, which is bad news for Denny Hamlin, Juan Montoya and Vickers, three of the four Chase drivers without a win at TMS.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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