Jimmie Johnson Three-Peats Las Vegas

There was a lot of concern from the drivers coming into the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400. Higher banking and new pavement brought speeds up. Goodyear brought a harder tire and Mother Nature brought warmer weather. These three factors combined to make for a very fast and very slick race track.

Drivers struggled early and the race started with a rash of cautions. Eventually the drivers settled down and the fastest cars came to the front.

Qualifying

Qualifying saw the previous track record get shattered. Kasey Kahne broke his own track record by almost 10 miles per hour. Kahne ran a blistering 184.855MPH lap. David Stremme posted the second quickest lap. Elliott Sadler, rookie Juan Pablo Montoya and Saturday's Busch winner Jeff Burton rounded out the top five.

Drop The Green Flag

It only took one full lap for the first caution as rookie David Ragan lost control on lap two and slapped the outside wall. Then right after they went back to green flag racing lap nine saw a multi-car crash including Robby Gordon, Casey Mears and Ward Burton.

NASCAR forced teams to use a small 13 gallon fuel tank. As a result nearly everyone pitted during the lap nine caution after teams had run a whopping 4 laps under green. After another handful of green flag laps we saw yet another multi-car wreck.

This was shaping up to be a very unusual race as we saw three cautions and two rounds of pit stops in the first 17 laps.

Finally the settled down and started putting laps in the books with Jimmie Johnson, Mark Martin and Elliott Sadler heading up the field.

Storylines

Nobody was happy coming into this race. The newly reconfigured Las Vegas Motor Speedway in combination with Goodyear's harder tire and the hot temperatures made for high speeds and very slick conditions. Drivers were expecting a lot of cautions.

The race started out as a mess but eventually drivers settled down and starting ticking off clean green laps. The majority of the middle part of the race was caution free.

Chasing The Checkers

The final green flag flew with just twelve laps to go. Jimmie Johnson lead Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin to the green, Johnson had been fast for most of the day, could he hang on for the final dozen laps?

Gordon had nothing for Jimmie Johnson. Johnson won by over two seconds to claim his third consecutive Las Vegas NEXTEL Cup victory.

Top Ten

1. Jimmie Johnson
2. Jeff Gordon
3. Denny Hamlin
4. Matt Kenseth
5. Mark Martin
6. Carl Edwards
7. Tony Stewart
8. Ryan Newman
9. Kyle Busch
10. Jamie McMurray

The Points

Mark Martin picked up his third top five finish of 2007 to maintain the point lead.

The top twelve in points are now:

1. Mark Martin -0
2. Jeff Gordon -6
3. Jeff Burton -42
4. Jimmie Johnson -89
5. Matt Kenseth -98
6. Kevin Harvick -106
7. Kyle Busch -113
8. Denny Hamlin -121
9. J.J. Yeley -130
10. Elliott Sadler -153
11. David Stremme -153
12. David Gilliland -160

Next Week

Next week the NEXTEL Cup stars head to a similar, but even faster, race track. Atlanta Motor Speedway is the fastest race track on the NEXTEL Cup schedule. This 1.54 mile high-banked tri-oval will see speeds at the end of the front stretch in excess of 200MPH with qualifying speeds for an entire lap averaging around 195MPH. The key word at Atlanta is fast, fast, fast.