Johnson, of course, proved that he had the best car of the day, holding off Hamlin even after Hamlin claimed the lower groove and the two spent the better part of a lap banging off of each other. Johnson eventually cleared Hamlin and quickly put about three carlengths between himself and Hamlin; and at that point, the race was over.
Johnson drove a few more anticlimactic laps, then drove into victory lane.
Hamlin did all he could, so he should be pleased with a second-place finish. Johnson was pleased too that a rookie driver would keep from being overzealous.
“I was able to rally back on the outside and get going, and once I got back going, I knew I had a better car and could get away from him,” Johnson said, according to the AP. “He played with that line, but didn’t cross it and I respect him for it.”
That was the big story of the latter half of the race, of course. The big story early on was Jeff Burton’s engine troubles.
I was surprised to hear myself agree with Wally Dallenbach (because that rarely happens). As the cameras focused on Burton, he was getting passed — and passed easily at that — by cars at the back of the pack, people like Kenny Wallace.
Dallenbach mentioned that Burton should get off the track ASAP to give his crew as much time as possible to see what was wrong with the engine and, if possible, get him back out to run for as many points as possible.
As it turned out, the broken valve train was too much and Burton retired, finishing 42nd. But one would think that nursing the championship lead would be the primary motivator for Burton, especially given the terrible weekend he was going through — he qualified 28th and fell a lap down at lap 106.
Perhaps Burton knew the problem was really serious, though the 31’s radio traffic that NBC broadcast didn’t sound fatalistic.
Either way, the standings are once again in upheaval. Burton dropped four spots, and he now trails (in order) Matt Kenseth, Kevin Harvick, Johnson and Hamlin. Still, he’s only 48 points out and there are four races left.
Burton promised that we’ve not heard the last from him, and it’s hard not to believe him.

Perhaps it’s as simple as this: Nothing’s been decided yet.
If NASCAR wants to compare itself to the country’s other major sports, perhaps we can look there and find some anecdotal evidence.
According to SportsBusiness Daily (subscription required), Game 7 earned a 12.4 rating—far higher than the 4.9 average rating that games 1-6 received.
If you’re a Redskins fan, obviously you want to know if they’re going to start their turnaround with an upset win in Indianapolis on Sunday. But maybe you’ve got some other things to do, and missing a Week 7 game won’t be the end of the world.
Now think back to last year. The Redskins seem dead in the water coming into December, when suddenly they get hot and make a playoff push. After a three-game winning streak, with a playoff spot on the line, are you going to watch the Redskins? Of course. (I leave out the NFL playoffs because at most, a team will play four games in the postseason, much less than the 10 races in the Chase.)
NASCAR has not crowned a champion yet. And with five races still remaining in the Chase, there’s no telling who will claim the title. In other words, nothing was decided at Lowe’s, and nothing will be decided at Martinsville or Atlanta or Texas. The standings will surely change, but they will hardly be finalized.
And if you’re a casual fan, you might think it won’t matter if you miss Sunday’s race. The highlights will be on SportsCenter or Speed or ESPNews or wherever; if Jeff Burton wrecks or a fight breaks out, you’ll see it there. And quite honestly, it’s hard to argue with that logic.
Moreover, it seems kind of disingenuous to try to explain TV ratings. A .1 percent swing means a change in 110,200 households. It’s hard to imagine all 110,200 — or many, many more — tuning away NASCAR because they’re fed up with the Chase. (Some probably are, but it can’t possibly be all of them.)
So take the numbers with a grain of salt. Or, more accurately, take the meaning of the numbers with a grain of salt.

Still, we can think ahead a bit. If the Cup series ever decides it wants to go a different route from the road courses currently on the schedule — Infineon and Watkins Glen — the options are nearly limitless, since most of the rest of the world runs on road courses.
With that in mind, we’ve got some suggestions for NASCAR. (And because we aim to be helpful, one’s even in this country.) In order of our preference:
1. Nurburgring (Germany). Sure, Nurburgring has a Grand Prix course, but we’d like to see the Cup drivers take on the entire length of this mammoth, 13-mile track.
But as you can see from this video, the long course is quite bumpy, and I have a feeling those Cup cars wouldn’t much appreciate having their bottom being scraped constantly. Keep an eye on the driver to see how much he bounces around. (The video, for me, took a long time to download and buffer. So be warned, it may take a few minutes.)
There’s also the fact that the course isn’t very wide; three-wide racing would be a very rare sight.
Still, we don’t always have to deal in reality. So Nurburgring makes the list.
2. Hockenheimring, Germany. This big speedway has an odd layout, one that will surely challenge the road track studs like Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon.
It also has generous seating. Its Web site claims it can pack in 120,000 fans, which is right in line with what NASCAR would like to see.
Another video to give you a glimpse of a lap around Hockenheimring.
3. Suzuka, Japan. This layout would be a challenge for drivers and engine builders: It looks like a sideways figure eight, but has many nooks and crannies and chicanes along the way.
Outbraking the driver in front would be a good way to get around the track, but that likely would lead to a lot of spinouts (and a lot of hot tempers, which we all secretly want to see anyway). The video is here.
The biggest drawback, of course, is the travel time. A JAL flight from New York’s JFK to Tokyo is aloft around 14 hours; those European tracks would be a much shorter trip.
4. Laguna Seca, Monterrey, Calif. One of our country’s more notable road courses and the top alternative to Infineon.
It would be interesting to see how Cup cars react to the course’s famous corkscrew, an incredibly tight, downhill turn about 3/4 of the way into a lap.
It’s a difficult corner for anyone to navigate, and it would be cool to see the world’s best try to do just that.
There are a series of videos on Laguna Seca’s Web site that takes you around the course.
• A REBUTTAL of sorts to our comments yesterday about how no one likes Martinsville. Kyle Petty apparently does.
“It really is grassroots racing,” Petty said, according to Speed TV. “There is not an aero package for Martinsville. We race around here just like my grandfather, father, and some of those guys used to.”
His full quote his here — check out the third item, Homeward Bound.

The primary goal for Cup scheduling has gone like this: Find or build a track near a metropolitan area, and use that to build interest in yet another market. Think about the tracks that have made it on the schedule in the past 15 years or so, most all of them have that quality.

And of all the tracks on the schedule, Martinsville is the least like the others. The market it serves is essentially Lynchburg and Roanoke – and with all due respect to our friends in those two locales, even they would admit they have no business being mentioned in the same breath as Los Angeles, Dallas and Las Vegas.

Darlington is much the same way, since one could argue that Pocono serves the Philadelphia market and – if you want to stretch it – the New York market as well. But Darlington has already had its marquee race taken away, as the Cup circuit heads to Fontana on Labor Day weekend.

Of secondary importance, unfortunately, is the quality of racing at Martinsville. It’s a difficult track to pass on, and any track with that label generally won’t produce good racing. Even the drivers don’t particularly care to run there. Again, one could make the argument that Pocono is not great racing, particularly since drivers don’t downshift going into Turn 1 anymore.

There’s also the matter that Martinsville generally isn’t an easy place to get to. It’s a pretty fair drive from I-81, the closest interstate.

That’s a lot of check marks in the bad column for Martinsville. And it all adds up to continued speculation that the track will lose a race. It may not be this year or even 2008, but the clock certainly seems to be ticking for Martinsville.

-- APOLOGIES FOR NOT UPDATING yesterday. Sometimes, random things happen: Covering the Virginia State Girls Golf Open at Forest Greens yesterday took a little longer than I imagined. Then, upon getting back to the office, we learned that Falcons guard – and Woodbridge native – Matt Lehr had been suspended after violating the league’s substance abuse policy, so there was work to do on that.

Sometimes, it really is beyond my control.