How Many Championships in a Row...

Does Jimmie Johnson have to win before NASCAR scraps the "Chase for the Championship"?

Will four do it? I don't know, but I doubt it. It'll be the first time that anyone's won 4 in a row, although both Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt won 4 in 5 years (2 and 2). Cale Yarborough won 3 in a row before, so I can see how that wasn't particularly surprising to people.

But looking at how Johnson is racing this season, once again leading the Chase, it just seems to me that he and Chad Knaus have this Chase format figured out. Maybe they have their cheating figured out (cause I still don't think Knaus plays with a fair deck), or maybe they just know how to get everyone operating at peak level for the last 10 races of the year. There is yet again an air of inevitability to it. There's always the possibility that he'll get wrecked, but at this point, I think it would take a gang-tackling to do it, maybe if Stewart gets Ryan Newman to slide into Johnson as he laps him.

The bottom line is that the only way I think Johnson's going to lose is if someone wrecks him. He's too good to do it himself, and he's a closer, at least for a long-view thing like a points race. Even if they completely miss the setup on a racetrack, which the 48 team never does, they fix it by the end of the race, and there he is in the top 5 at the checkered flag.

Or maybe, like last year, my posting about the leader at this point will jinx him, and Montoya can come through for the win.