FanHouse Sharp 500

NASCAR Nextel Cup point leader is now in a must-win situation Saturday night at Richmond if he wishes to be part of the point lead heading into the Chase for the Championship.

Jimmie Johnson cruised to victory lane Sunday night at California Speedway, scoring his fifth victory of the season and ten more bonus points for the Chase, which starts in two weeks at New Hampshire.

Gordon wasn't a factor after an incident late in the race and now faces the possibility that his 317-point lead could wind up being a 10 or 20 point deficit after 400 laps at Richmond International Raceway with Johnson's win.

On the other end of the Chase spectrum, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was all but locked out of the 2007 edition of the Chase despite finishing 5th. He sits 13th in the standings, 128 points behind 12th-place Kevin Harvick with the lone regular season race remaining.

All Harvick has to do is finish 32nd Saturday and he is locked in, even if Junior leads the most laps and wins.

The race had a higher number of wrecks than normal, including two mildly series incidents.

Jeff Gordon has had a decent season.

In 25 races, he's scored 20 Top-10s, 14 Top-5s, and with four wins. Those results have led to a 349-point lead over second-place Tony Stewart in the season standings.

That kind of lead could allow the four-time champ to take off of the last two races before the Chase for the Nextel Cup at California and Richmond and only end up 41 points down if Stewart won and led the most laps in each event.

Gordon won't do that, naturally, and following Richmond he's still going to have nearly the same result.

For 2007, NASCAR instituted a new quirk for the Chase that was based off of seeding the drivers for the final 'playoff'. Apparently, though, in their haste to change a playoff system that was still in its infancy, NASCAR overlooked the fact that leading the points after 26 races needs some credibility, too.

"I think that you put a lot into the 26 races and basically you can end up 12th in the points and all of what you've done up to this point is pretty much gone," Gordon said this weekend at California.

"So yes, I would like to see them have some sort of a bonus whether it's money or points or something to reward what you've done for anybody that's been in this position."

Of course, theres not a whole lot of people in the stands or the garage that mind having Gordon reigned back in to the rest of the field for the first ten races.

It's been a rumor on the Fanhouse for a quite a while now, but now it seems we're getting some validation.

Joe Gibbs Racing has an announcement scheduled for next week that is supposed to involve Toyota, according to ESPN.

Joe Gibbs Racing is expected to announce next week it will join Toyota beginning next season, sources told ESPN.com.

A news conference has been scheduled for Wednesday morning at JGR headquarters. Expected to be in attendance are team drivers Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin.

JGR, which boasts a three-car lineup that will include Stewart, Hamlin and Kyle Busch next season, is leaving General Motors after 16 years. The team earned three series championships, including two with Stewart, under the GM banner.

All three of those championships, of course, have come within the last seven seasons as well, making one believe that there is quite a bit of cash being thrown around by Toyota.

For JGR fans, this move has to go down a little bit uneasy after all the problems we've seen in Toyota's Nextel Cup debut. From aerodynamics to a lack of engine performance, Toyota just hasn't solved a lot of the big issues this season.

Will JGR's experience and engineering department be a tremendous asset to Toyota? You betcha.

But I'll go out on a limb right now -- a pretty short limb, that is -- and guarantee that JGR won't run out to the same start that they got in 2007 during the 2008 campaign.