Johnson is one-step closer to history, Biffle clashes with the Loganos

Jimmie Johnson and the No. 48 team continue their championship chasing primacy at California.  He dominated while the rest of the field simply chased him.  It was pretty much the same old story as the previous three years.  There is really nothing more to say about Johnson’s win.  With all due respect to Johnson, his team, as well as his fans, but I am bored stiff.  I would like to write about something other than his annual supremacy. 

Johnson’s historic run at four successive titles does make the dominance tolerable.  In twenty or thirty years, many of us will have the privilege to tell our children and grandchildren that we witnessed Johnson’s historic run of four or more championships in a row.  Heck, if Johnson stays around long enough, his streak of championships may still be alive in twenty or thirty years. 

Despite the historic feat, the majority of fans are yearning for a new champion, one that would generate more interest.  I guess we are sacrificing excitement for historic achievements. 

On Saturday, Joey Logano captured the Nationwide Series victory despite his little run-in with Greg Biffle and the outside wall.  In case you missed it, Biffle clearly ran Logano into the wall.  Logano’s team labored to repair the damage.  Ultimately, Logano survived a series of late-race accidents and won the race.

He had the last laugh, but not without controversy.  Tom Logano confronted Biffle after the race and had his credentials pulled after he had some choice words for The Biff. 

Firstly, if my son won a race, I would be celebrating with him in victory lane instead of hollering and flipping birds at another competitor.  As a father, you want to defend your son, but you can do so without stealing your son’s thunder.  He should have approached Biffle on Sunday morning before the Cup race.  The conversation would have been more civil, and he would have not taken attention away from his son’s victory. 

Biffle should have been a little more subtle in his revenge against Logano, who knocked in Biffle’s fender a week earlier.  He obviously had a faster car, or he would have never caught Logano to pass him in the first place.  If he was going to enact revenge, he should have refrained from revealing his intentions over the radio.  Perhaps he should have waited until later in the race. 

Biffle definitely got into Logano, but honestly, I think the impact of the hit was a little blown out of proportion.  I saw Kyle Busch slam the wall at Darlington about a half a dozen times last year, and he still won the race.  Some of his run-ins with the wall looked worse than Logano’s on Saturday.  Before you scream ‘aerodynamics’, Darlington is an aerodynamically sensitive track too.  In the older less durable car, I saw Biffle himself smack the wall at California or Michigan, I cannot remember the track, but he still won the race.  Obviously, the damage was not irreparable or Logano would not have come close to winning. 

“Apparently, that was the only way he (Biffle) thought he could beat us, but you can’t put this No. 20 team down…You don’t want to get me mad, I just race harder,” said Logano.

Seriously, Logano getting mad is just not that intimidating.  Additionally, I think Biffle could have beaten Logano, as he had to catch him to pass him, or put him in the wall.  In fact, Biffle probably would have won if he could have cleared Denny Hamlin and Brad Keselowski.  I do not think the bump had anything to do with Biffle fearing Logano’s speed.  It was revenge. 

“Oh yeah, I saw him (Tom Logano) flip me off, yeah.  They’ve got short memories, you know?  They don’t remember last week when they smashed my left front fender in…He was lucky he had time to fix it.  I got mine smashed in on the last run of the day.  I didn’t have time to fix mine,” said Biffle.

Biffle has mixed it up with some drivers in the past such as Kevin Harvick, Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, and Kurt Busch.  Logano has yet to really bang fenders with other drivers, but he did draw the ire of the fiery Robby Gordon at Watkins Glen.