The 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series has come to a close, especially with Friday night’s end-of-the-year Sprint Cup Awards Banquet in Las Vegas. Jimmie Johnson was crowned the 2009 champion for the fourth consecutive year.

While the drivers have finished their week-long celebration in Las Vegas and have headed home, the crews are busy at work in their North Carolina shops, preparing for the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup season.

Here is a look at the good, the bad and the just plain ugly of the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Season.

The Good

Jimmie Johnson

Jimmie Johnson won his fourth consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship. Enough said.



Mark Martin

Mark Martin came back to Sprint Cup racing full time this year, behind the wheel of the No. 5 car that Casey Mears had driven the year before.

Unlike Mears, Martin put the Kellogg’s Chevrolet in Victory Lane five times, and started at the front of the field with the Coors Light Pole Award a whopping seven times.

Martin finished second in points, something he has done four times previously.

Changing your retirement plan wasn’t bad for Brett Favre, and it wasn’t a bad idea for Mark Martin, either.



Stewart-Haas Racing

Stewart-Haas Racing, the reinvented team now owned by Tony Stewart and Gene Haas, was the real surprise of the season. Stewart and Ryan Newman, along with crew chiefs Darian Grubb and Tony Gibson, took a team who barely made races in 2008, and became a championship-caliber team in 2009.

Both Stewart and Newman made the Chase. Stewart, who led nearly all of the 2009 regular season point standings, finished sixth in points, earning four wins, 15 top-fives and 23 top-10s. He had a season average finish of 10.4 (Jimmie Johnson’s average finish was 11.1).

Newman finished ninth in points, and won two Coors Light Poles during the season. A lot of people picked Stewart-Haas Racing to fail, and make Stewart wish he had never left Joe Gibbs Racing. Well, those people were wrong.

The Bad

Kyle Busch

Although he did not make the Chase, Kyle Busch had a pretty spectacular season. He finished 13th in points and won a total of four races, with nine top-fives and 13 top-10s.

Busch’s only trouble began around the time the cut-off for the Chase began, and he found himself with a little bad luck and was 13th in points. While his Sprint Cup Series year didn’t compare to his 2008 seaon, he did end up winning the 2009 Nationwide Series Championship for Joe Gibbs Racing.



Roush Fenway Racing

At the beginning of 2009, many people in the NASCAR world were sure that Jack Roush and his five drivers – Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth, Jamie McMurray and David Ragan – would be at the top of the class.

That almost happened when Kenseth won the first two races of the season, in Daytona and California, but after that, the good luck ended.

While McMurray won the Coke Zero 400 in Daytona in July, his third career win, the rest of the Roush Fenway gang went winless in 2009. Edwards and Biffle both made the Chase on the strength of their consistency, but neither had spectacular seasons.

The Ugly

Richard Childress Racing

Richard Childress Racing experienced a non-winning year. None of the team’s four drivers – Kevin Harvick, Clint Bowyer, Casey Mears or Jeff Burton – were able to win a race. During the entire season, Harvick and Burton had only five top-five finishes, and Bowyer had four. Mears never finished in the top five in 2009.

Richard Childress, the team owner, switched crew chiefs around, and even crews, but nothing helped.

Only at the end of the season did the team look as if it was coming around. Burton finished second in the last two races, leading many to believe that 2010 could be a better year for Richard Childress Racing.

The same can’t be said about Mears, who doesn’t know if he will have a ride for the 2010 season. He is signed with Richard Childress Racing through the 2011 season, but Jack Daniel’s supposedly will not renew its sponsorship of the No. 07 car for next year.

If this is true, Mears could have a different car number for the sixth year in a row. Let’s hope he has a ride, because he has a new baby and a soon-to-be bride to support.



Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was the only driver for Hendrick Motorsports to not make the Chase, while his teammates finished 1-2-3 in the championship points.

While Earnhardt may be NASCAR’s most popular driver for the seventh year in a row, he would also deserve NASCAR’s most overrated driver, if there was such an award.

While most fans like to blame the driver’s cousin and former crew chief, Tony Eury Jr., for Earnhardt’s troubles, a new crew chief, Lance McGrew, didn’t help the driver much. Earnhardt is under too much pressure from the sponsors and the fans, due mostly to the fame that he has accumulated over the past few years.

His attention is spread out in too many directions, with his ownership of different things, such as Whiskey River, his bar in downtown Charlotte.

Let’s face it, Junior Nation, he will never be what his father, the late, great Dale Earnhardt Sr., was.