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A season of fantasy racing has once again come and gone. Jimmie Johnson was the best at the end of the year, and came home with his third consecutive Cup Championship. But while Johnson was on top when the Chase wrapped up, he was far from the best fantasy driver on the race track. Instead, the wheelman with the best average finish for the entire season -- who should have scored the most fantasy points for gamers -- was Carl Edwards. His average finish was 9.5, more than a full position better than second place Johnson, who came home with a 10.528 average for the year. The highest average finishing non-Chaser, and a person who should be very high on gamer's lists for their 2009 season draft, is...

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I’m conflicted. The 2008 NASCAR season is finally over. “Finally” for me has a few different meanings. Mainly, it has been a hectic and exhausting year, balancing working and writing while trying to maintain some semblance of a semi-normal social life. Secondly, because this has been, after 26 years of …

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*Did You Notice?* … Yates Racing is cutting down to just two cars for next season? I’ve heard that talk for awhile now, and the move would put the beleaguered David Gilliland on the chopping block. If it’s a battle between Gilliland or Kvapil for that spot, however, it’s a no brainer that Kvapil gets the nod. Not only has the No. 28 car run better than the No. 38 for most of the season, but Gilliland endured a flurry of late season crashes and mechanical failures in between intentionally wrecking Juan Pablo Montoya at Texas. Failing to finish eight times this season, Gilliland has yet to develop into the type of star power driver some expected after a surprising Nationwide (then Busch) Series win at Kentucky back in 2006.

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Tough times have arrived for U.S. corporations, and thus NASCAR as well. This has prompted some of the sport’s best known and respected personalities to come to the aid of stock car racing’s most important partner - the U.S automobile manufacturers. As the heads of the Big Three car builders gathered in Washington D.C. yesterday with hats in hand to beg for further financial aid to stay afloat, a “grassroots” campaign kicked off within the NASCAR community to encourage fans to support Chrysler, Ford and GM in their quest to be the next segment of the U.S. economy to get in on the new trend of taxpayer-backed loans.

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*Jimmie Johnson became the second driver ever to win three straight NASCAR Cup championships by clinching the Cup at Homestead. Does that cement Johnson’s place among the best ever in the history books, or is the jury still out?* Kurt: Certainly it places him among the best. And lets discuss that before we figure in the Chase factor. Jimmie has been great every year he's been in Cup. Chase or not. Amy: I agree, Bryan, but that's because you can't compare them, not because Jimmie's is any less impressive Bryan: I didn't say it wasn't impressive. It's certainly an accomplishment, but trying to compare it to, say, Cale Yarborough's three-peat, is like comparing apples to oranges.

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*10.* Brian France could disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow and no one would notice. Well OK, we would notice because someone with some competence would be running the show. However, this guy has been here five years now and still, every time he speaks or appears in public, you are left with a profound sense of waste. This guy is not bright enough to tie the laces on his loafers. Oh, that’s right; loafers don’t have laces! *9.* The ban on testing will not save the teams one bit of money. As it has been pointed out on this site before, the teams that could afford testing will spend it some other (possibly more expensive) way. The teams that couldn’t afford massive testing, well, they ain’t got the money to save anyway and are only hurt further.

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After 36 points-paying events, nine months, and 14,493 miles of racing, the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup season is finally in the books. When the smoke cleared, it was Jimmie Johnson winning his third consecutive championship, tying Cale Yarborough as the only drivers in history to accomplish that feat. Behind him, Carl Edwards finished second but won the most trophies, with a total of nine checkered flags captured throughout the year. In contrast, Jeff Gordon snapped his streak of at least one win per season at 14, while Matt Kenseth and Kevin Harvick were some of the other notables who got shut out of Victory Lane. However, none of those drivers mentioned got left out of our final power rankings poll of the season. As you might expect, Jimmie Johnson was unanimously voted number one on our list; but where did the other drivers mentioned wind up? Read on to see if your wheelman shone in the Florida sun, or got sand kicked in his face in the final edition of our 2008 Top 15 rankings.

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The economy in the United States, and for that matter around the world, has taken a drastic downturn during the past NASCAR Cup season. The resulting struggles of teams trying to acquire sponsorship have already been well documented. The massive layoffs that many predicted to befall the Cup garage this …

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Team Layoffs Continue The 2008 season is now over, and the economic crisis is beginning to come down on race teams in the Sprint Cup Series. Already, DEI (as a result of the merger between DEI and CGRFS) and Hendrick Motorsports, in addition to JR Motorsports in the Nationwide Series, …

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Long before all of this NASCAR success began, Johnny Benson had claimed the 1993 ASA title, much the same as Mark Martin and Alan Kulwicki before him. Before that he won a track championship at Berlin Raceway in Marne, Michigan. A couple of acquaintances of ours from high school also race there; Brian Maxim and Jack Drolema. His two year stint at Roush Racing looked to be ready to pay the same dividends as it had to Martin and Jeff Burton at the time, but in the end it would prove to be more reflective of his other teammate at the time, Ted Musgrave. A soft-spoken driver on and off the track, Benson has never been one to engage in the fire suit grabbing escapades of Kevin Harvick or controversial comments of the Busch brothers. After defeating Ron Hornaday for the Craftsman Truck Series Championship on Friday night – a fight that went down to the very last lap of the race – Hornaday was one of the first to come over and congratulate him for his efforts. It isn’t often that the guy who just got put on the trailer will come over and heap praise on the one who just sent him to the showers. That alone should tell you bibles full of truth about him as both a competitor and a person. Johnny Benson however is one of the rare breed of drivers in this sport that manages to be a fan favorite yet non-polarizing.

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