Can anybody stop Jimmie Johnson? Gotta catch him

  Kyle Busch: last tour win was August 2009 at Bristol...but at least he's finally back in the Sprint Cup top-12 (Photo: Toyota Motorsports)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   ATLANTA
   Where is Kyle Busch?
   Remember when he was the hottest driver in NASCAR?
   Well, at least he's off to a consistent start this season: 14, 14, 15....Daytona, California, Las Vegas.
   Of course for the hard-charging Busch, that's pretty mediocre. And he's led only 15 laps, of the 725 over those three.
   And Busch isn't even leading the Joe Gibbs pack; that's second-year racer Joey Logano.
   Maybe he's pacing himself, trying not to make any mistakes that might keep him out of the championship chase again.
   Or maybe the Joe Gibbs camp has lost a step....just like the Richard Childress camp has picked up a step, maybe even two this season.
   Consider that Denny Hamlin, one of the pre-season picks to win the championship is mired 22nd in the standings, already more than 200 points down....
   Hamlin, who won four races last year, says he thinks Toyota engines are down on power this season; but Lee White, head of Toyota's racing operations, says no way. Gibbs' head engine man is veteran Mark Cronquist.
    In fact engine power hasn't appeared to be a significant issue in the sport lately. Last summer, when NASCAR did its most recent engine dyno comparison testing of team engines, the team that had the best engines – the Richard Childress operation – was far off the pace out on the tracks themselves.
    The story here in the Gibbs camp looks to be this:
   -- Hamlin had a great run at the 2009 title (until he made a restart error at California, trying to chop off Juan Pablo Montoya, and crashed), and he came in to 2010 as a heavy media pick for the Sprint Cup title. But this season Hamlin managed only a 17th at Daytona, a 29th at California, and a 19th at Vegas, and he's led only seven laps. So Hamlin is clearly frustrated. On top of that, Logano, just 19, has the best record of the Gibbs trio, with a fifth at California and a sixth at Las Vegas.
   Hamlin is at 29 the veteran at Gibbs, now with Tony Stewart gone, though Hamlin (eight career wins) only has four full seasons under his belt.
   However Busch, only 24, has been more the headliner, with 16 tour wins (12 with Gibbs) in his five seasons. But Busch missed the playoff cut last September, while Hamlin was showing championship maturity with two playoff wins (Martinsville and Homestead).
    "I'm finally back in the top-12 again; it's been a while," Busch says ruefully.
    That's right; Busch, despite more wins the last two years than anyone else but Jimmie Johnson, fell out of the top-12 last July...perhaps one reason for the crew chief change late last year.
    So far this season Busch has been, well, slow. "We need to be running with them," Busch says of Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus. "Right now we're running a few spots behind them. And we're definitely not finishing nowhere near where they are.
    "But it's not that we're worried. We have to be in the top-12 after the first 26, and then we can race Jimmie."
    "Anything can bite you in the next 23 races."
    The question may be 'Can anything bite Jimmie Johnson....'
    Johnson and Knaus, Busch says, "are probably the best team in history."
     "We'd like more top-fives than top-15s," Busch concedes, "but we still need these finishes to make ourselves capable enough to run in the chase. 
     "We've had some good runs this year. We had a fast car at Daytona, we had a fast car at California, and the same thing at Vegas.  In all three races we had circumstances not quite go our way."
    One of those was that pit road speeding penalty last Sunday.
   

   

   Joey Logano: leader of the pack (Photo: Toyota Motorsports)

   

   
"They're the best of the best," Busch says of Johnson and Knaus.  "They're the guys you've got to beat every single week, every single year. 
    "They had the opportunity at California, and they had a perfect call go their way, and they won the race. 
     "They had the opportunity to win at Vegas, and they had another good call go their way, and they were the smartest, and they won the race. 
     "At California (in the Saturday Nationwide race) we put ourselves in position to win that race all day; we ran second all day, and we certainly weren't the best car, but we ended up winning."
    Then again maybe Busch has simply been sidetracked a bit with his new Truck team: "It's been a challenge, definitely."
    Sponsorship for one. "It's been a struggle trying to find the sponsorship dollars you need to run the team.
    "We're going to run the year regardless, but it would certainly make it nice to pay off all the notes I've got outstanding on buying everything. 
    "Hopefully down the road it will pay off, and in two, three, four years we'll be stronger than ever."

     On the other hand, the tide has turned for Jeff Burton, one of car owner Richard Childress' three drivers in the top-seven at the moment.
     Still Johnson has won two-of-three already this season, and Burton is still looking for his first tour win since Charlotte in late 2008.
     Again this weekend here Burton points to Johnson and Knaus as "the team to beat. 
    "Their history, their success, speaks for itself.  No one in the garage area is surprised that they have done what they've done at the beginning of the year. 
     "The question is who is going to knock them off. 
    "My approach to it -- and it hasn't been as successful as I would like it to be -- is to focus on Jimmie and Chad just from the sense of learning....but the only way we can beat them is for us to do our job better. 
    "I can't control the way they do their job;  I can control the way I do my job. 
    "But I'm around a lot of people that the last two weeks have just flipped out (over Johnson's success): 'How did he win that race? He's lucky. It ticks me off.'
    "But I'm not that way, I'm honestly not. 
    "They got a lucky break at Vegas, and they took advantage of it. They made the right call.
    "And you can see they didn't really have the best cars in those two races, and they still found a way to win. 
     "I don't think that's luck; I think that's skill.
     "They've done a hell of a job.
      "We just have to be better.  My motivation isn't knocking them off; my motivation is us doing better. 
       "I don't race Jimmie with animosity; I don't race him with jealousy. 
      "I'm envious of him, no question. Who wouldn’t be?
      "But the only way I can do it is to go out and do it." 
      But, teammate Clint Bowyer notes, that won't be easy: "One of them (Johnson's California win), there was a little bit of luck involved. Nonetheless when they got up front they drove away from my teammates, and my teammates couldn't run them back down."

    
    

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    And will Denny Hamlin, a pre-season title contender pick, even make the chase? (Photo: Toyota Motorsports)