Tony Stewart

Here we are at the final race of the 2011 season. The thing about the NASCAR season is sometimes it seems like it will go on forever, but when we get to this point, it always seems like it was over too soon. None the lest here we are. And the final race of the season brings with it no shortage of drama. A new Sprint Cup champion will be crowned on Sunday. Five-time champion Jimmie Johnson, along with 9 other drivers that qualified for the chase, have been eliminated. So it comes down to Carl Edwards vs Tony Stewart.

You know what I love about the last men standing in the Chase for the Sprint Cup? How much these two drivers are so different, and yet so much alike. You have Tony Stewart, the unabashed bad boy, who really is a softy at heart. And then there is Carl Edward, who Stewart once called "NASCAR's Eddie Haskell. " Edwards is NASCAR's All-American boy, but he's got a bad boy streak to him. "This is going to be a good competition, you guys," said Edwards. "Don't think for a second that either one of us are going to let anything slide.

Just two races are left until we crown a Sprint Cup Champion. And it looks like we will have a new champion for the first time in five seasons. Five time champ Jimmie Johnson is 55 points behind leader Carl Edwards in sixth place. A lot of drivers would have a pair of disastrous races for five time to become six time. Which is just one of the reasons that the drama will be cranked up as NASCAR heads to the desert. Also adding to the intrig is that no one knows what to expect at the Phoenix International Raceway.

Tony Stewart won another round in the NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup championship, edging points leader Carl Edwards on Sunday in the "Texas Title Fight" to close the gap with two races left. Stewart raced to his second straight victory, and fourth in the eight Chase races, finishing just ahead of Edwards at the 1½-mile, high-banked track. Stewart cut his points deficit from eight to three with a winning margin of 1.092 seconds. The series returns next week to Phoenix, where the track has been reconfigured and resurfaced since Edwards and Stewart finished 1-2 there in March in the third race this season, and then to Homestead-Miami Speedway for the finale.

Tony Stewart passed Jimmie Johnson on a restart with three laps to go Sunday and surged into contention for his third NASCAR Sprint Cup championship with three races left. The victory was the third for Stewart in the first seven races of the 10-race playoffs. Stewart moved from 19 points behind leader Carl Edwards and in fourth place to just eight points behind in second as several contenders got caught up in a season-high 18 caution flags. Edwards struggled all day, but rallied to finish ninth and held on to a lead that he seemed likely to lose.

The thing about Tony Stewart is, one would never call him shy. He calls them like he sees them. Some of his rants are funny, some are petty, some right on the spot, some are way off base. But that is Tony Stewart. Love it, hate it you always know what's coming. His unpredictability, to strangely predictable. That being said, no one could have seen this coming. I mean, Tony Stewart has had the reputation of being strong late in the summer and into the fall. But he really hasn't shown a lot of that recently.

Tony Stewart made it 2 for 2 in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship, pulling ahead when Clint Bowyer ran of gas with two laps left to win at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Sunday. Stewart is on a roll when it matters most, following last week's Chase opening victory with another strong performance at New Hampshire. Both of his victories this season have come in the Chase and have propelled him to the top of the points standings. The outcome was a complete reversal of last fall's race at New Hampshire.

Winless no more. Poor-mouthing Tony Stewart, who four days ago minimized his chances for a third Sprint Cup title, outlasted the field in Monday's rain-delayed Geico 400 at Chicagoland Speedway. Saving fuel during a 50-lap green-flag run to the finish, Stewart, who started 26th, crossed the stripe .941 seconds ahead of hard-charging Kevin Harvick to win his first race of the season and the 40th of his career, tying him with Mark Martin for 16th on the all-time list. This is the same Stewart who had said at Thursday's Chase media day in Chicago that there were seven drivers who could win the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup - and he wasn't one of them.

So there they are, the 12 drivers that will battle for NASCAR's top prize, the Sprint Cup. Exactly the 12 you had in right? Me, not so much. So first off let me apologize to Matt Kenseth, Ryan Newman, Dale Earnhardt, Junior, Brad Keselowski and all their fans. Clearly I underestimated the strengths of your team this season. Now that the field is set, let me take another crack at picking the field. Who will step up their game, who has used up all their chips just to get in it? These are my thoughts, take them with a grain of salt....

Time to head to what I consider my home track, the Atlanta Motor Speedway, even though I don't live down there anymore. This will mark the first AMS race I've missed since 2003 and that makes me a little sad. It also makes me a little sad that this is the first trip to the mile and a half, high speed, high banked track this season. AMS lost it's spring race to Kentucky. And we all know how that worked out. Still it seems a little strange just be heading to Georgia for the first time this season and it's September.