Will Jimmie Johnson three-peat? Will Roush-Fenway strike back with a vengeance? Will the NASCAR's Next-Generation race car perform at a high level? These are all looming questions for 2008, and its up to you to decide!
Make your selections, return to Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 if you haven't made your selections there yet, and be sure to check in on Friday here at the FanHouse as we unveil our results of the FanVote, prior to the annual Nextel Cup Awards ceremony in New York City.
Welcome to the NASCAR FanHouse FanVote 2007. This is a chance for you, the fan, to tell the world what you think about the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series in 2007.
Today, the questions at hand are concerning driver performance on track this year during the 36 events of the Cup series schedule.
Be sure to check back each day this week for more questions and more topics. All of the results will be compiled at the end of the week and we'll reveal the results according to the vote from you, the fans!
Once you've voted, let everyone else who is getting ready to vote know what your opinion is by leaving a comment below.
Jeff Gordon said it best last week when he said Jimmie Johnson "has flat killed everyone" in the Chase for the Nextel Cup.
That didn't change Sunday night at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Jimmie Johnson finished seventh in the Ford 400 to wrap up his second NASCAR Nextel Cup Championship in a row by 77 points over Hendrick Motorsports teammate and co-team owner, Jeff Gordon. Johnson is the first Cup series repeat champion since Gordon did it in 1997-98.
Johnson, who was going for his 5th win in a row, led only the first lap of the race after starting from the pole and was a steady Top-10 fixture for the rest of the race. Gordon managed to earn 9 points in the final tally on Johnson by finishing fourth, but it wouldn't be enough for the four-time champion who also had a season to remember by recording his 30th Top-10 of the season, a new NASCAR record.
Oh Yeah, Matt Kenseth Won, Too
Also celebrating Sunday night at Homestead was the Roush-Fenway Racing team after Matt Kenseth won his second race of the year.
The folks that run Homestead-Miami Speedway cannot be Jimmie Johnson fans.
Even though they do have a sell-out for next Sunday's Nextel Cup season-ending Ford 500, Jimmie Johnson has ruined any type of excitement that was building in the fight to win the Chase for the Nextel Cup.
Johnson won Sunday afternoon's Checker Auto Parts 500k at Phoenix International Raceway for not only the fourth-straight race, but also to take a commanding 86-point lead into the final race at Homestead.
Talk about a lead balloon.
A lead balloon, that is, if you wanted to see a finish to the season like we got in the first edition of the Chase, when Kurt Busch, Jeff Gordon and Johnson all had legitimate title chances.
But if you are a Johnson fan, life is good.
After Johnson's late-race domination at Phoenix -- a race in which he led the final 24 laps -- Johnson leads Gordon's No. 24 team by 86 points. The basic math on that is that Gordon must win and lead the most laps at Homestead and Johnson has to finish 18 or worse.
In other words, it's not going to happen.
Gordon stated in the post-race interview that Johnson & Co. have "flat-out killed everyone" in the past few weeks. After all, it's not very often that a driver can lose 154 points in the point standings by consistently finishing in the top-10. To top that off, Johnson becomes the first driver since Gordon in 1998 to win four-straight races.
But in 2007, Jimmie Johnson has been good enough to do that. And because of that, he has stuck a fork in Brian France's Chase.
The Essentials Coverage: ESPN on ABC @ 3:00pm/ET Green Flag: 3:45pm/ET Distance: 312 laps/312 miles/500 kilometers Other: Follow it on ESPN360 if available Venue: Phoenix Int'l Raceway, sold out
Keep These in Mind... 1) Chasing Dreams - The second-to-last round of the Jeff and Jimmie Show: 2007 gets underway with the green flag. It's simple, Jeff Gordon has to overcome a 30-point margin in the next two races to win his fifth Nextel Cup title. Johnson has to beat him to claim his second.
Johnson averages a finish of one spot higher than Gordon at Phoenix, but Gordon was the last to win at the track in April.
2) Three-peat? Kyle Busch could become the first driver in NASCAR history to win in all three divisions on the same weekend. Busch took the victory in Friday night's Craftsman Truck Series race and followed that up with a Busch Series win Saturday night at PIR.
He starts 38th Sunday at Phoenix in the Nextel Cup race.
3) A Flavor of Indy in the Desert - For just the third time in history (thanks, Jayski!), three former winners of the Indianapolis 500 are in Sunday's race. Sam Hornish Jr., Juan Pablo Montoya, and Jacques Villeneuve all made the field.
Add in former open wheel drivers Patrick Carpentier, Casey Mears, Robby Gordon, and Tony Stewart and you see very quickly how quickly NASCAR has become the all-around proving ground for drivers.
4) Truex Strong in Practice - Martin Truex Jr. starts second at Phoenix but had the car to beat in Happy Hour practice yesterday. He ran the fastest lap of the session, followed by Kasey Kahne, Casey Mears, David Stremme and Jeff Gordon.
Chase point leader Jimmie Johnson was seventh on the time sheet.
Carl Edwards has quietly allowed the brouhaha with fellow Roush driver Matt Kenseth to slowly disappear in the media in good fashion.
Quietly enough, in fact, that he won the pole at Phoenix and no really seemed to care -- nor bring the topic up. After all, there are two races left in the "Hendrick Motorsports Trophy Deciding Circus" and three former winners of the Indianapolis 500 are in the show.
But yes, Edwards did in fact win the pole with a lap of 132.773mph. It's his first of the season and guarantees the No. 99 Ford a spot in the 2008 Budweiser Shootout at Daytona. Edwards bested Martin Truex Jr. for the top spot by just three one-thousandths of a second.
"I told them after that lap, I said, 'That was a blast.' The guys did a great job with the car -- everybody," said Edwards.
The pole for Edwards was his first since he started on the point in the 2005 Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
As for "The Jeff and Jimmie Show", Jeff Gordon will start right behind Edwards in third while Johnson will roll off the grid from the sixth position.
The list of past Indianapolis 500 winners is indeed well-represented in the Nextel Cup grid. Juan Pablo Montoya starts 14th, Sam Hornish Jr. made his first Nextel Cup race and starts 26th and fellow '500' winner Jacques Villeneuve lines up 27th.
The going home list includes all three Michael Waltrip Racing cars, A.J. Allmendinger, John Andretti and Ward Burton.
Dude got shoved into a segment on ESPN2's NASCAR Now showing ESPN's impressive NASCAR coverage. Or, well, I hope he got shoved into it.
Before I rip the whole segment apart, let me allow Jeff Burton, ESPN's token driver voice for their coverage to do so as he did in the video:
"Well the first word that comes to mind is absurd. The first goal of racing is to be there at the end. This system would award people and reward people for doing things that actually would hamper the way they would finish the race," said Burton.
"So it makes no sense -- you used the worst example in the world at Talladega to expose a problem, when in fact, we don't have this problem at most race tracks. So you have to run toward the front, you have to run hard in order to be competitive at almost every race track with the exception of Talladega. So, in a word, I think it's absurd."
Amen, Jeff.
For me, this whole segment (with a nice after-touch of Judge Judy) shows why ESPN and NASCAR fans haven't exactly gotten along this season.
Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway gave me that feeling of something I haven't seen in a while.
Most likely, I had that feeling because, well, I hadn't.
Sunday's race, the third win in-a-row for Jimmie Johnson, had a grand total of 55 loop lead changes -- the most NASCAR has had in a race since it started keeping tabs on the data provided by the several different scoring loops around the track.
Yes, NASCAR stars of today swapped position, for the lead, multiple times, with much at stake. Awesome!
I can imagine that those high numbers could be easily chalked up to a couple of quality battles -- side by side nonetheless -- that happened during the Dickie's 500 for the lead. (The best example starts at about 8:41)
First, it was Denny Hamlin vs. Matt Kenseth with less than 100 laps to go. Hamlin drove like he hasn't won a race in awhile to battle Kenseth for the lead for several laps. Swapping the position back and forth, Kenseth finally got the better side of the deal when Hamlin lost control of his No. 11 Chevrolet off of turn two. Hamlin never spun the car, but he impacted the wall hard enough to end any chances at a win (starts about 7:57).
Kenseth luckily avoided Hamlin's mess to find himself dueled in another battle in the closing stages on the event.
But the the Friday one certainly will. (At 12:30pm EST, actually!)
That announcement also won't likely carry any new news along for Lowe's Motor Speedway vs. Concord City Council, either, as Speedway Motorsports CEO Bruton Smith is expected to announce a purchase of Bob Bahre's independently owned track in New England -- New Hampshire International Speedway.
On Friday, Smith is expected to announce only the purchase of the track in Loudon, N.H., and not speculate on any plans to move either of its two Nextel Cup Series race dates, multiple sources said.
Smith has previously stated his desire to add a second Cup date to his track in Las Vegas. He also has expressed interest in an earlier date for his second Texas race to avoid a conflict with the opening of white-tail deer hunting season.
Yes, you read that correctly -- to avoid a conflict in Texas with not an open wheel race, a Cowboys game, or a rodeo but rather white-tail deer hunting season.
Think that just threw out every stereotype that the NASCAR bigwigs in Daytona have been trying so hard to abandon? You can bet Brian France is cringing to hear that a track owner is trying to help the fans that don't drink martinis or Perrier -- but rather is making them us a priority.
And to think, just Tuesday, I was questioning Bruton's commitment to the fans. (And well, I probably still would if he moves LMS, but as for now, he's got some points in my book.)
But the real announcement on this issue, apparently, isn't being made Friday at Texas Motor Speedway.
We've seen and heard the battle that the City of Concord (N.C.) and Lowe's Motor Speedway have had in the past month.
Thursday could be the day of reckoning on whether or not LMS' parent company, Speedway Motorsports Inc., and CEO Bruton Smith will either ruin yet another fantastic piece of the NASCAR history (remember North Wilkesboro?) or if he will remember the fans that earned his his wealth and keep the legendary speedway.
There is talk of an announcement on Thursday that will go a long way toward determining if Lowe's Motor Speedway will remain in its present location or go on the road to a neighboring community, as Smith has threatened.
I honestly feel a little bit sick to my stomach knowing that such a place could potentially be leveled -- and for what, a billionaire owner on a power trip?
That really sounds like a track owner who is touch with the fans.
The city council has given Smith the go-ahead to build a NHRA drag strip, are willing to help with tax incentives on new building projects at LMS, and most importantly -- they want to rename a street already named "Speedway Boulevard" to "Bruton Smith You Are Our King Street" (or at least something or the sort).
It's the last day to get your votes in for the first-ever NASCAR FanHouse FanVote.
Welcome to the NASCAR FanHouse FanVote 2007. This is a chance for you, the fan, to tell the world what you think about the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series in 2007.
Jeff Gordon said it best last week when he said Jimmie Johnson "has flat killed everyone" in the Chase for the Nextel Cup.
The folks that run Homestead-Miami Speedway cannot be Jimmie Johnson fans.
The Essentials
Carl Edwards has quietly allowed 
So that 
We've seen and heard the battle that the City of Concord (N.C.) and Lowe's Motor Speedway have had in the past month.
