HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Many years from now, lots of people will say, "I was there."
The crowd of 75,000 for the Ford 400 on Sunday will grow to about 750,000 in 2020. It's human nature, just a little white lie. It always happens on the rare occasions of a historic sports moment.
People want to say they were a part of it: "I saw Jimmie Johnson win his fourth consecutive Sprint Cup title."
Or the other memorable possibility: "I saw Mark Martin shock everyone and finally win a Cup title at age 50."
Some can say it legitimately. But the ones who actually become a part of it are the other drivers on the Homestead-Miami Speedway track.
They all know Sunday is a special day for NASCAR. Win or lose, all of them will look back fondly as competitors on an afternoon of remarkable achievement.
"I don't think Jimmie is getting the credit he's due," Brian Vickers said Friday. "Whether he wins this championship or loses it, we're going to look back 20 or 30 years from now and say, 'They were incredible.'''
Marcos Ambrose will start the race right behind Johnson, who won the pole Friday.
"I don't want to be the guy that ruins his chance," Ambrose said. "I'll be following him into Turn 1 with a safe distance behind him -- kind of like the Interstate rule."
No driver wants to be the guy who people remember as the one who kept Johnson from his destiny, except Martin, of course.
"It's not that we won't race him," Ambrose said. "If I can pass him, I'm going to pass him. But you just have to treat him with respect."
At this point, respect is universal among Johnson's competitors.
"Those guys are just in a groove that we haven't seen since the late '70s," Kurt Busch said Friday. "It's pretty wild. They're tough competitors. They're strong. All you can hope to do each week is to put yourself in position to win, and when you're able to come out on top and beat those guys, you had a good day."
No one has more respect for Johnson's accomplishment than teammate Jeff Gordon, who recognized Johnson's talent eight years ago and helped convince Rick Hendrick to hire him.
"I saw something in Jimmie that I thought could be special," Gordon said Friday. "I had no idea he was going to take off and do what he's done. But I sure am happy now because I look pretty good saying, 'Oh, yeah, absolutely, he's going to do all that.'''
Gordon, who is listed as the owner of Johnson's No. 48 Chevy, remembers sitting in a meeting with Hendrick and Lowe's officials, who wanted to know if Johnson was the right guy.
"I'll never forget it," Gordon said. "Having [Lowe's] CEO Bob Tillman flat-out look at me straight in the face and say, 'Do you really believe that Jimmie can win races and win championships?'
"I told him I believed with Hendrick equipment and the right people around him that, yes, he was capable of it. Now, how much of that did I believe was going to come true? I wasn't sure. I knew that Jimmie had great talent, but I had no idea."
How could he? No one did.
Yes, Johnson has every advantage -- a great organization, the best equipment and a brilliant young crew chief in Chad Knaus.
"If you aren't a good driver, you aren't going to make that package work,'' Tony Stewart said Saturday. "Jimmie does a great job behind the wheel. He has an extremely high amount of talent. He knows what he wants out of his race cars. He knows the feel that he wants."
What Johnson wants now is to complete his date with history.
"Jimmie is just as hungry for the fourth [title] as he was for the first,'' Hendrick said Friday. "I think if you can be any more committed, he is. Chad is the same way. I never worry about having to motivate these guys. They're plenty motivated."
Motivation and dedication, coupled with talent and top equipment. All those things have brought Johnson to this moment -- a chance to do something most people thought couldn't be done.
Vickers said he believes that level of success should be praised and revered.
"But I don't know what it is about our sport," Vickers said. "You go watch Tiger Woods play golf or you watch the Yankees win another World Series and it's celebrated. For some reason, when that happens in our sport, everyone asks, 'What's wrong?'
"Nothing's wrong. I think we should just step back and say, 'This is great for our sport.' Jimmie is about to win four in a row. There's nothing wrong with that. They're just good."
And years from now, people will say, "I was there," even if they weren't.
Sunday's disaster at Texas shaved 111 points off Jimmie Johnson's Chase lead.
"I just don't want to live by the peaks and the valleys," Johnson said. "I do better in that middle ground."
Easier said than done. On Friday at Phoenix, he admitted the Texas crash got to him. A few doubts managed to creep into his mind this week.
"That's all I've thought about for the whole week," Johnson said. "I'm ready to get that out of the brain. But that negative feeling is there. That emptiness is there.
"Last week, I thought, 'Man, I just lost 111 points.' That part is still there. I've thought about it enough."
Johnson enters the Checker O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 on Sunday with a 73-point lead over Mark Martin.
"I still feel that a 73-point lead is a very, very healthy lead," Johnson said. "But it's hard to look back at the week before when it was 184 [points] and the comfort that it brought."
Johnson won't find any sympathy from the other Chase drivers.
"I know they had one bad week, but a lot of us have more than one bad week," said Juan Pablo Montoya, who is 236 points back in sixth spot. "As a team, they're doing an amazing job. They got everything together."
Teammate Jeff Gordon said Johnson's No. 48 Chevy team reminds him of his championship years with the crew known as the Rainbow Warriors.
"I'm not trying to take anything away from Jimmie," Gordon said Friday. "But you say 'Jimmie' and I say 'team.' To me, all the success I've had at winning championships is because we were the best team. I did my part, and Jimmie does his. He focuses really hard on being prepared and giving his best.
"Not every driver out there puts that much effort into it. And not all crew chiefs put the effort that Chad [Knaus] puts in. Not all team members put in that effort and not all organizations put in the effort. So it's a total team effort."
So let the doubts disappear, Jimmie. He's going to win this thing and become the first driver to earn four consecutive Cup crowns.
You want some reasons? OK. We've got five reasons:
1. History: Cup drivers don't choke off a 73-point lead with two races to go. It's only happened once in 60 years (Alan Kulwicki made up an 85-point deficit in the last two races of 1992).
2. Phoenix: He owns the place. Johnson has won three of the past four races on the 1-mile flat oval, including the last two fall races.
3. Consistency: He had seven consecutive top-10s before the Texas race.
4. Team: As Gordon said, the No. 48 crew is the best in the sport. Last week proved it -- the team rebuilt a destroyed car to get him back on the track. And Knaus is the best crew chief in NASCAR, hands down.
5. Driver: Want to know the best-kept secret in racing? Johnson is the best driver in NASCAR. He can drive this car on the edge better than anyone else in Cup. And he makes fewer mistakes than any other driver.
Denny Hamlin wonders when people will figure out just how good Johnson really is.
"I don't know how long it's going to take for him to get the respect that he deserves as a race car driver," Hamlin said Friday. "We can see out on the racetrack the talent that he has. I know what respect he has from us."
Johnson will start on the inside of Row 2 at Phoenix. Starting up front means less chance of getting caught up in a wreck with slower cars, which caused Johnson's problem at Texas.
"I don't think lightning can strike two weeks in a row," Johnson said. "I'm certainly hoping it doesn't. My goal is to keep the stress down."
That's the calm Johnson, the one the public sees. But there's a voice deep down inside that still worries.
"You never know," he said. "This is racing. Anything and everything will happen."
Surprising things happen, like the impossibility of a driver winning four consecutive Cup championships.
AVONDALE, Ariz. -- Maybe you haven't noticed, but Richard Childress Racing is improving. And Sunday's race could gauge just how far RCR has come.
Everyone at RCR is disappointed about the organization's lackluster results in 2009, no victories this season and failing to place a driver in the Chase for the first time.
But things are looking up. The Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway last weekend was the first time in more than a year that RCR had three drivers finish in the top 10 on the same day.
Richard Childress has been scrambling to put his Sprint Cup teams on more competitive footing.
Fuel strategy played a part in how things sorted out at the end, but the Childress boys ran well all day.
Kevin Harvick's fifth-place showing was his best finish in the last two months. Clint Bowyer was seventh, his fourth top-10 in the eight Chase races. And Jeff Burton finished ninth in his backup car after wrecking the primary car in practice two days earlier.
"What a heck of a run by our team," Burton said after the race. "These guys fought hard after we had to load up our primary No. 31 Chevy. Todd [Berrier, crew chief] did a great job dialing in our backup for the race."
The TMS event was the first time RCR had three top-10s in a race since the Dover fall event last year. The cars are more competitive and the guys on the pit box are making smart decisions at key moments.
"Our car was tight all day," Bowyer said after the TMS race. "But Shane [Wilson, crew chief] made a call to short pit for fuel in order to make it to the end. The cards fell in our favor and it was another good result."
The four RCR drivers, including Casey Mears, have posted 11 top-10s in the eight Chase races. At least one RCR driver has finished in the top 10 in each of the last five races.
But this weekend is a big test. RCR was awful at Phoenix in April. Burton was the only RCR drivers to finish on the lead lap, and he was 15th. Mears ended up 20th, Bowyer was 26th and Harvick was 30th.
"Yeah, that's when we knew we needed to start doing some work on our cars," Harvick said earlier this week. "What made it really evident was that we actually ran 30th.
"It wasn't like something happened to put us back there, like contact with another car or brushing the wall. Then I could see us running back there."
It was only the eighth race of the season, but Harvick and everyone else at RCR knew they had serious problems, and those problems weren't solvable overnight.
A week later, Childress announced that Harvick and Mears were swapping crews. It was the first of many changes that have transpired this season for the RCR teams.
Harvick says he's leaving after his contract expires next year. RCR may go back to three cars next season because Jack Daniel's is leaving as the sponsor of the No. 07 Chevy, so Mears probably is out of a ride.
But the last few weeks have been encouraging for the RCR folks. The results have improved dramatically and all signs point to a possible resurgence in 2010.
FORT WORTH, Texas -- From the first lap ever turned at this place, Texas Motor Speedway often has made the unexpected a reality.
It began with a multicar crash on the first turn 12 years ago. No one would have guessed Jeff Burton, a fourth-year driver who was winless in his career at the time, would go to Victory Lane in that first race in 1997.
And who would have thought 10 years would pass before Burton became the first driver to win twice at Texas, a track that had 12 different winners before that moment?
It took Sunday's pole-sitter Jeff Gordon 12 years to finally find Victory Lane at Texas.
So don't be surprised if the Dickies 500 on Sunday brings another surprising moment.
Can Kyle Busch become the first man to complete the triple and win all three NASCAR events on the same weekend? He has a shot at it.
Can Carl Edwards escape the winless column of 2009 and post a victory at the track where he swept both Cup events last year? Maybe.
Can Dale Earnhardt Jr. end his 54-race losing streak and win at the place where he earned his first Cup victory nine years ago? Hey, anything's possible.
Or is this Jimmie Johnson's show the rest of the way en route to his historic fourth consecutive championship? That wouldn't surprise a soul.
Jeff Gordon, who starts on the pole Sunday, raced 12 years at TMS before finally earning a victory on the 1.5-mile oval in the April event this year.
Phoenix is the only track where it took longer for him to win, coming 14 years after his first start in the Arizona desert. Gordon has yet to win at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but the Cup series didn't start racing there until 1999.
Now Gordon can become the second consecutive driver to sweep the season races at Texas. Gordon ranks third in the Chase behind Hendrick Motorsports teammates Johnson and Mark Martin, but Texas is his only victory this year.
"This is a tricky track," Gordon said Friday. "The straightaways are very flat here compared to how high-banked the corners are. And those transitions really challenge you. Plus there's some bumps and the corners are fast, but they're tight. The walls come out at you very, very quick. So it's not an easy track."
Gordon said it was the TMS race one year ago when the No. 24 team figured out the best way around the place.
"Last year at this time we were out of it," said Gordon, meaning out of title contention. "It allowed us to sort of do some testing and we tried some things that we hit on and it really seemed to pay off here."
But Gordon has one big difference from the spring race at TMS.
"This is not the same car we had here earlier in the season," he said. "We feel like this is a better car."
Gordon's not the only one with something new this weekend. Kyle Busch has Dave Rogers on the pit box for the first time. Rogers, who was Busch's crew chief in the Nationwide Series, replaced Steve Addington as the crew chief of the No. 18 Toyota.
"Dave and I have a sense of what we need from each other and what we need to talk about," Busch said earlier this week. "It might be a bit of a learning curve for Dave, getting all his paperwork on the new car. But for me, it will be just talking with Dave and trying to get everything going to prepare ourselves for 2010."
A record-setting victory Sunday to sweep the weekend would be a nice way to start things off.
Edwards and Earnhardt would settle for any victory at this point. Edwards was encouraged after posting the second-fastest lap in the final practice Saturday.
"That's the fastest we've been in a long time," Edwards said afterward. "We'll see how it goes. It's 500 miles and there will be a lot of things that change throughout the race, but it feels nice. We've got a fast race car."
Earnhardt won his first Cup start at TMS in his rookie season. He has seven tops-10s at Texas, but hasn't posted a top-10 at TMS in the last three years.
"We've had some good success at Texas," Earnhardt said this week. "It's a fun track. I just like the enthusiasm that the crowd has. It gets me excited."
Johnson is excited about getting a step closer to the championship. A good showing Sunday would give him an excellent shot of clinching the title at Phoenix next weekend.
Johnson has finished first or second in three of the past four TMS events, including second to Gordon in April.
"We've been very competitive the last two years here," Johnson said Friday. "Certainly, we're happy with where we are in the points. But it's not really going to change what we do. We want to win the race."
If he does, TMS will lose its rep of producing the unexpected. If he doesn't? Well, maybe the place has a surprise or two left for everyone.
With Jimmie Johnson, bottom, poised to win the title, Mark Martin, left, in second and Jeff Gordon third in the standings, Hendrick Motorsports could have the first 1-2-3 finish in Sprint Cup history.
Jimmie Johnson is almost assured of an unprecedented fourth consecutive Sprint Cup title, but Hendrick Motorsports has another dominance record it can achieve.
Rick Hendrick can become the first team owner in NASCAR history to sweep the top three spots in the standings.
With three races remaining, Hendrick drivers hold down first, second and third with Johnson, Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon, respectively.
Juan Pablo Montoya, who drives for Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, has the best shot to break up the party. He's fourth, 47 points behind Gordon.
Tony Stewart is fifth, 40 points behind Montoya, but technically, Stewart also is a Hendrick guy. His Stewart Haas Racing team shares a technical alliance with Hendrick Motorsports, using Hendrick chassis and engines.
If Stewart passes Montoya, Hendrick cars would be four-for-four at the top. Hendrick is the only organization to claim the top two spots in the standings since the modern era began in 1972.
Terry Labonte won the 1996 championship when teammate Jeff Gordon finished second. Gordon also was second to Johnson in 2007.
Multi-car teams were rare back in the day, but a triple sweep almost happened in 1956. Buck Baker won the title driving for legendary car owner Carl Kiekhaefer. Teammate Speedway Thompson finished third.
Herb Thomas, who was second in the standings that year, drove a third Kiekhaefer Dodge for more than half the season. But Thomas ended the year in a Chevrolet he owned.
Chevrolet drivers hold the top five spots in the standings heading to Texas Motor Speedway this weekend. The last time the top five drivers ended the year in Chevrolets was 1980.
So who's the big winner? At a plus-13, it's Kurt Busch. He finished 18th in the 2008 standings driving the No. 2 Dodge, but he's fifth now and could end up better before the season ends.
Some people would point to Juan Pablo Montoya at an impressive plus-19 (25th last year and sixth now). Technically, he's driving for the same team.
But Chip Ganassi merged his operation with Dale Earnhardt Inc. (forming Earnhardt Ganassi Racing) and switched from Dodge to Chevy engines. Nevertheless, it's a heck of an improvement for Montoya.
Another big plus-side man might surprise you -- Sam Hornish Jr. He's 27th in the 2009 standings, which doesn't sound so hot, but it's eight spots better than he was at the end of 2008.
Brian Vickers is next with a plus-7, making the Chase for the first time in the No. 83 Toyota and earning the first victory for Red Bull Racing. He's bringing up the rear in the playoff at the 12th spot, but he ended last season 19th in the standings.
David Reutimann, who earned his first Cup victory this season in the rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600, is a plus-6, going from 22nd last year to 16th in 2009.
Now for the bad news. The first guess for many fans on the biggest minus probably would be Dale Earnhardt Jr. Not true, but not good.
Earnhardt is a minus-10 at the moment. He finished last in the 2008 Chase and he's 22nd in the 2009 standings. And that difference is a bit misleading because he couldn't finish any worse than 12th last year as a playoff driver.
Bringing up the rear on the minus scale this season is Kevin Harvick at a whopping minus-17. He was fourth a year ago in the No. 29 Chevy, but he's 21st now. One thing is similar: He didn't win last year and he hasn't won this year.
Harvick plans to move on after 2010, the final year of his contract at Richard Childress Racing, but he's not alone in the minus column at RCR this year.
Jeff Burton is minus-13 (sixth to 19th) and Clint Bowyer is minus-10 (fifth to 15th). But Bowyer is essentially with a new team this season. Mears went to RCR and took Bowyer's old crew. Mears is 18th with the team that finished fifth in 2008.
No. 2 on the minus scale in 2009 is David Ragan at minus-15. He almost made the Chase in 2008 and ended the season 13th. Ragan is 28th this year in the No. 6 Ford.
In Ragan's defense, all the Roush Fenway Racing drivers are down this year, just not as much. Greg Biffle is having a decent season, but he's minus-4 (third to seventh for now).
Carl Edwards is minus-8 after finishing as the 2008 runner-up to Jimmie Johnson. But the big downer for Edwards is going from nine victories last year to zero so far in 2009.
Jamie McMurray is minus-9 (16th to 25th) in his last season at RFR. McMurray may replace Martin Truex Jr. at EGR next year. Truex is minus-8 this season (15th to 23rd) in the No. 1 Chevy.
Sometimes things look worse than they are. Matt Kenseth failed to make the Chase for the first time in his career, but he's only two spots worse than he was last season (11th to 13th). He also has two victories compared with none in 2008.
Drivers still have five events to move up (or down) the scale, but this gives a good indication of who needs to step it up in 2010 and who should feel good about his upward trend in 2009.
Patrick is hoping to work out a deal with JR Motorsports to run a few Nationwide races next season while continuing to race full-time in the IndyCar Series.
"I wouldn't be doing both cars, to be honest with you," Montoya said Friday. "That's my advice. The cars are so different. You will get comfortable [in the Nationwide car] and then go to the other thing, and every time you come back will be like night and day."
Johnson, who was listening when Montoya gave his opinion on Patrick's plan, shook his head in agreement.
"I think that's a valid point," Johnson said. "The overall thing she needs to accomplish is getting seat time. That's everything in learning these cars and these tracks. She may have raced at some of these tracks, but not in a closed-body vehicle. So it boils down to seat time."
One successful Sprint Cup driver made his NASCAR start while continuing to race Indy cars. Tony Stewart ran nine Nationwide races in 1996 and five Nationwide races in 1997 when he won the IRL championship.
Stewart raced 22 Nationwide events for Joe Gibbs Racing in 1998 while running the full IRL schedule before moving full-time to Cup in 1999.
Patrick visited the Stewart-Haas Racing shop earlier this year. Stewart was impressed with her attitude toward making the move to NASCAR.
"I know that she's serious about it," Stewart said last month at Atlanta. "I don't think she has some misguided idea that it's going to be easy. She wants to do it the right way."
Carl Edwards said Patrick shouldn't expect too much too soon.
"As far as advice to Danica, I guess the biggest thing would just be patience," Edwards said Friday. "The races are very long and the competition is so close that if you go out there and get impatient or try too hard, that's a surefire way to disaster.
"It's just patience. It will take time no matter how good someone is. I think coming from another discipline to this, that's a huge step."
Johnson thought Patrick should try to drive anything with a body on it, and accept the fact that she's going to have some accidents.
"Hit some walls," Johnson said. "Tear up equipment, make mistakes. You have to go through that. You can't shortcut it. It doesn't matter if you're Juan Pablo from F1 or the guy from the local short track. You have to go though those experiences to learn."
Lance McGrew has shown signs of progress after taking over as Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s crew chief, but it hasn't shown up in the form of better finishes.
In the first 12 races this season when Tony Eury Jr. was the crew chief, Earnhardt's average finish was 22.0. In the 16 races since McGrew took over, Earnhardt's average finish is 22.0.
The good news is things haven't gotten worse.
Statistics, of course, don't tell the whole story. Yes, statistics can be misleading. Earnhardt has run up front several times recently when he failed to finish well for various reasons.
Regardless of what the stats show, Earnhardt is a big McGrew supporter. But Earnhardt claims he has no say-so in who becomes his crew chief for 2010.
That decision is made above his pay grade. Well, few people, if any, in NASCAR are above his pay grade, but at least above his rank on the Hendrick Motorsports organization chart.
However, since we asked, Earnhardt was happy to offer his opinion on the matter. His vote is to keep McGrew in the No. 88 Chevy pit box.
"I like working with Lance," Earnhardt said Friday. "I get along great with Lance. We've had some great runs. It has happened more often and more consistently with Lance. I feel like I can build on that type of success."
Earnhardt will start on the front row Sunday after qualifying second at Kansas Speedway for the Price Chopper 400.
McGrew replaced Eury at the end of May, starting with the spring race at Dover. Earnhardt had finished 20th or worse in five of the previous six events, but was 12th in McGrew's debut.
It was a promising start, but the new pairing hasn't been an immediate fix for Earnhardt's woes this season. He has finished 20th or worse in nine races since the change, including each of the last three events.
But there are some signs of better days ahead. Earnhardt finished third at Michigan in August and ninth the next week at Bristol.
He was headed to a possible top-5 finish at New Hampshire before a bumping incident with David Reutimann ended Earnhardt's day. Earnhardt showed his emotions afterward and criticized Reutimann.
But he isn't taking out his anger on his crew chief, which he often did with his cousin, Eury.
"I feel like I'm a different racecar driver than I've been over the last several years," Earnhardt said. "Just my temperament and my disposition throughout the races and the weekend have changed. I still have to check myself every once in a while.
"I get a little angry, but just during practice and stuff when something you do to these cars can frustrate you. But for the most part, Lance is really great at controlling the situation, controlling our team and directing our team throughout the weekend. I've enjoyed the experience working with him."
Earnhardt emphasized that team owner Rick Hendrick will determine whether McGrew has done enough to keep the job. Hendrick has not said what his plans are for the 88 Chevy next year, but Earnhardt wants to make it an easy choice.
"The decision isn't mine and never will be mine," Earnhardt said. "I hope that we'll have more success to give Rick and the people that do make those decisions good reason to keep us as a team and keep us working together. I hope we go into next season with the same group of guys."
Terry Blount covers motorsports for ESPN.com after 25 years as a sports reporter and columnist at three major metro newspapers.
Terry began covering auto racing in 1995 at the Houston Chronicle before moving to the Dallas Morning News in 2001 as its motorsports columnist. Terry joined ESPN.com in 2006.
He is an honors graduate of the University of Houston with a B.A. in radio/television communications.
Terry has earned numerous writing honors in his career, including the Citation for Writing Excellence from Hearst Newspapers and the Excellence in Journalism Award from the Houston Press Club.
Terry Blount
