NASCAR NEXTEL: The final NASCAR race of 2007, the Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami, rolled off the line in the late afternoon sun. Jimmie Johnson held the pole and the series lead over his teammate Jeff Gordon. By lap 20, Kenseth was out front in the #17 car and looked extremely strong. Jeff sat back at 5th, Jimmie a couple positions further on. Truex was laying down some fast laps in the early goin,g and also looked like a serious player. Greg Biffel has won here the last three years… some think he’s an odds-on favorite, others figure he has gotten all he deserves. During the first pit stops under green ,Reed Sorenson’s jack man left the device under the car when Sorenson pulled the #41 Dodge out. The jack slid back to the left rear wheel and was spit out with frightening force, but fortunately, no one was in the path of the flying chunk of aluminum.

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The sun was playing havoc with the driver’s view on the track. Making matters worse, on the restart, Dale Jr. was punted by Jeff Burton hard enough to put him into the wall. For the next 40-50 laps, the sun messed with all the drivers, but the outcome of the Chase was beginning to look predictable. The statisticians determined that if Gordon were to win, Jimmie Johnson needed only 19th place or better to take the Championship. The #24 car was running well, but not anywhere well enough to pull to the front, and Johnson didn’t look like he planned to fade out of the top ten. So the most intense racing was with Kurt Busch and Denny Hamlin for second place behind Kenseth. After the final restart with 9 laps to go, the parade to the finish was Kenseth, Kurt Busch, Denny Hamlin, Gordon, Carl Edwards, Truex, and the 2007 Nextel Series Champion Jimmie Johnson in 7th. Matt Kenseth was a convincing winner, leading 214 laps and doing the DeWalt team proud.

Keeping the smoky winner’s tradition alive, both Kenseth and Johnson ran their cars up to the inside wall at the start/finish line and proceeded to destroy their rear tires in celebration. See you next year!

NASCAR BUSCH: The celebration at the Busch NASCAR finish in Florida was "old school," befitting the end of 26 years of Busch sponsorship - but we're getting ahead of ourselves. With 35 laps left in the Ford 300, the final Busch Series race, Jeff Burton was out front with Bobby Hamilton and David Ragan not far back. Three laps later, with most of the leaders in need of fuel, David Ragan came into the pits a tad hot, got it sideways and tagged the sandbags with his right rear quarter panel. This was a great gift to the other front-runners who all pitted under the resulting yellow (12th) and scrambled back out with new rubber. At the restart, Burton was holding the lead, with Mark Martin and Carl Edwards just ahead of Stephen Leicht and Greg Biffel. When both Burton on the high side, and Martin down near the white line got loose on lap 183, Edwards slid past Martin for second. Burton was able to pull out a small lead while Edwards and Martin dueled for the second spot. It looked like Mark Martin in the Richard Childress Chevy might be able to make a run for Burton if he could get back around Edwards. Trouble was that effort took about ten laps, leaving Mark way too little time and too much distance to challenge Burton. Jeff Burton took the checkers after leading three times for a total of 51 laps. Mark Martin collected another second to end the season, and Carl Edwards just added to his domination of the driver’s championship points. Jeff refused to indulge in the smoky crowd-pleasing burn out the “youngsters