Updated April 14
Jimmie Johnson was the biggest winner Saturday at Phoenix, but he wasn't the only successful gambler.
Clint Bowyer, Jeff Burton, Casey Mears and Bobby Labonte all greatly enhanced their finishing positions by choosing to gamble on fuel mileage.
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| A gutsy move late in Saturday night's race helped Clint Bowyer finish second in Phoenix. (Getty Images) |
"It was a good call by (crew chief) Gil (Martin)," Bowyer said. "He told me from the get-go we were only three laps from making it all the way. I just sort of started saving it and saving my brakes more than anything. And then in turn, it was saving fuel too. So it just worked out for us today."
Bowyer's Richard Childress Racing teammate Burton also benefited from the fuel mileage gambit, though he wasn't particularly pleased with his performance.
"We were going to run 11th, 12th or something like that, but (crew chief) Scott (Miller) made a great call and got us a sixth," Burton said. "We will certainly take it. I am disappointed in how we ran. I am disappointed in myself.
"It was a good finish for us, but we are missing something at this track, I am missing something at this track. It has been a thorn in our side."
Mears, a teammate of Johnson's at Hendrick Motorsports, had an average running position of 20th for the race but snuck away with 11th after the No. 25 team chose to forgo a final stop for fuel.
"It was a gamble worth taking, we needed the points," said Mears, who is 25th in the standings. "Once we committed to it, we just went ahead and let some of those guys go ahead and go. I'm excited about where we ended up. I'm not really excited about our performance, but the guys did a great job and it was a good team effort."
Labonte spent but 13 laps in the top 15 and had just four "quality passes" -- defined as the number of times passing a car running in the top 15 while under a green flag -- yet finished just one spot behind Mears in 12th.
"We really fought all night," Labonte said. "I don't want to say that these cars don't drive good because they can drive better. We just didn't do the best job that we could do. We came here and tested and were awful. We had a lot of things going against us tonight, but I'll take it."
The biggest gambler of all was Johnson, but the funny thing is, it wasn't necessarily a risk the 48 team needed to make in order to take the victory. The 48 car was strong all night and crew chief Chad Knaus noted that the win wasn't simply something they lucked into.
"We didn't win it on fuel mileage," Knaus said. "You know, we could have pitted right there with everybody. Say if everybody came down pit road and took two tires, everybody came down pit road and took four tires, I think we would have been in position to race for the win."
Power Rankings after Phoenix:
| POWER RANKINGS | ||
| Current | Driver | Previous |
| 1 | Jimmie Johnson | 1 |
| Johnson started the 2006 Chase with four consecutive finishes outside the top 10. In 36 Chase races since, he has just five finishes outside the top 10 while picking up 12 victories. | ||
| 2 | Mark Martin | 2 |
| His seven poles were a career high. His second-place points finish was his best since finishing second in 2002. His five wins and 805 laps led were his most since winning seven and leading 1,730 in 1998. | ||
| 3 | Jeff Gordon | 3 |
| Finished top five in nearly half of this season's races and his 25 tops 10s were tied for third most in 17 years of full-time Cup duty. | ||
| 4 | Denny Hamlin | 4 |
| He and his 11 team struggled with consistency at the start of the season, but once they found their groove, they were as good as anyone. He earned a career-high four victories and 15 of his 20 top 10s were top fives. | ||
| 5 | Kurt Busch | 5 |
| Easily his best season since joining Penske Racing in 2006 with his 21 top 10s matching his career-high set in 2004, when he captured the championship with Roush Racing. His 10 top 10s tied for second-most of his Cup career. | ||
| 6 | Tony Stewart | 6 |
| Sure he exceeded many expectations, but after such a dominating regular season where he was knocking off top fives with ease, the late-season struggles surely left the team somewhat disappointed. | ||
| 7 | Juan Pablo Montoya | 7 |
| When he started the Chase with four consecutive top fives, it looked like he had a chance to shock the world. But then things fell apart, with wrecks leading to three finishes of 35th or worse over the final six races. Overall, though, Montoya made huge strides in his third season, earning the first two poles of his career, seven top fives, 18 top 10s and 0 DNFs. In his first two seasons, he had managed just five top fives and nine top 10s while failing to finish 13 races. | ||
| 8 | Kyle Busch | 8 |
| Though he enjoyed much success with crew chief Steve Addington -- 12 wins together over the past two seasons, including four this year -- there was also much inconsistency, which cost him a spot in the Chase this season. Will new crew chief Dave Rogers be able to keep Busch in check? | ||
| 9 | Clint Bowyer | 9 |
| Though he missed the Chase, finishing 15th in the final standings, his 2009 season wasn't all that much worse than 2007 and 2008 when he finished in the top five overall. A streak of nine consecutive finishes outside the top 10 through April and May proved too much to overcome. Started to make some waves toward the end of the season. | ||
| 10 | Greg Biffle | 11 |
| While it was a down year for Roush Fenway Racing, Biffle still managed to have a relatively successful season by his standards. Though he failed to win for the first time in six years, his 10 top fives and 16 top 10s were third most of his career. His 551 laps led were his most since 2006. | ||
| 11 | Jeff Burton | 14 |
| During the last month of the season, only Johnson and Hamlin were hotter. The problem was the other nine months of the schedule. After a crew chief change to Todd Berrier, Burton ended the season with four consecutive top 10s of which three were top fives and two were runner-up finishes. However, in the season's first 32 events, Burton had managed just two top fives and six top 10s. | ||
| 12 | Matt Kenseth | 12 |
| Two wins and a cloud of dust. Kenseth started the season with his first career Daytona 500 victory and followed up with a win the next weekend in California. It was a nightmare year after that, especially during the second half of the season. Over the final 18 races of the year, Kenseth managed just five top 10s. | ||
| 13 | Ryan Newman | 10 |
| Newman came to Stewart-Hass off of three sub-par seasons at Penske Racing. He enjoyed a slight resurgence, making the Chase for the first time since 2005, but performance dipped a bit during the Chase. He ended the season with just one top 10 over the final eight races. | ||
| 14 | Kasey Kahne | 13 |
| Amidst all the chaos at Richard Petty Motorsports, Kahne still managed to make the Chase and snag two wins, seven top fives and 14 tops 10s. With his contract expiring after the 2010 season, he's ready to start listening to offers. | ||
| 15 | Carl Edwards | 15 |
| Coming off a season in which he notched nine wins, 19 top fives and 27 top 10s, a 0-win, seven-top five and 14-top 10 performance can't be considered anything but highly disappointing. All were career lows. | ||
