It all comes to an end this weekend.
By: Drew Hierwarter
We have arrived. This is the final race weekend of the 2007 NASCAR season. All three of NASCAR’s national series will run their final points race at Homestead-Miami Speedway beginning on Friday Night with the NASCAR Craftsman Turck Series. It’s fitting that this is the first race of the weekend, as it will decide the best championship battle of the three circuits. Ron Hornaday, Jr. is only 29 points behind Mike Skinner and these two have been swapping the point lead back and fourth for the last month or so. Mike Skinner was the very first Truck Series champion in 1995 and Hornaday has won the title twice, in 1996 and 1998, so both men know how to get it done.
The NASCAR Busch Grand National Championship has already been decided. Carl Edwards clinched the title a couple of weeks ago. But he will be the last ever “Busch” champion as the Anheuser-Busch company has decided to end it’s 23 year association with the NASCAR junior series. Next year the series will be known as the Nationwide Grand National Series. Nationwide Insurance has picked up the title sponsorship ball and will run with it beginning in 2008.
NASCAR’s top division, the Nextel Cup Series will see the many things coming to end after Sunday’s final race. It also will get a name change as Nextel plans to re-brand it’s communications business to the Sprint name. So beginning in 2008, the series will be known as the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. This year’s champion, whether it’s Jimmie Johnson or Jeff Gordon, will be the final “Nextel Cup Champion”. The cars will be different too as the much debated “Car of Tomorrow” becomes the “Car of Today, Now, and Forever”. The current car that teams have been racing for decades will no longer be used and the new car will run in every race from the opener at Daytona in February on.
Lots of driver changes mean a lot of fairwells, and probably the most talked about change all season has been Dale Earnhardt, Jr’s move from DEI, the company his father started, to Hendrick Motorsports, arguably the most powerful team in the sport right now. This Sunday will be Dale’s final race in a DEI car. To make room on the team for Earnhardt, Kyle Busch will be making his final start in a Hendrick Motorsports car. Beginning next year Busch will drive for Joe Gibbs racing where he will team up with Tony Stewart, and Denny Hamlin. To make room for Busch, J.J. Yealy will drive his last race for Joe Gibbs racing, although the team he will drive for next year will essentially be a satelitte of JGR and will run cars supplied by that team, so it won’t be much of a change.
So, the season comes to an end. Thirty five races ago we all watched the Daytona 500 and wondered how the season would evolve, how the “Car of Tomorrow” would perform, and how the championship chase would shake out. We now know the answers to these questions and it’s time to sit back, enjoy the final race of the year, and start to figure out what we’re going to do with ourselves until it’s time for Daytona again next February.