2009 full of surprises

The season that was NASCAR 2009 wasn’t only a historic one, it also provided a lot of surprises -- both good and bad.

While Jimmie Johnson winning a Sprint Cup title is no surprise, he did claim a fourth-straight in 2009, something that has never been done.

While Johnson as Sprint Cup champion lost its shock value years ago, there were some surprises from the Hendrick Motorsports camp.

For one, the resurgence of veteran driver Mark Martin. It’s no secret that Mark Martin can drive a race car, but 2009 was his first full-time season in a few years, and he was racing with a new team, making the move the HMS from DEI following the 2008 campaign.

A new home and a little rust didn’t slow Martin down. As a matter-of-fact, they may have sped him up.

Not only did Martin claim his first Cup win since 2006, he went on to make four additional visits to victory lane. His five-win total was second only to Johnson, the only driver to finish ahead of him in the championship points standings. Martin also won the most poles in 2009 with seven.

Also history making, thus at least somewhat surprising, was Hendrick’s dominance of the championship hunt. Hendrick drivers claimed the first three positions in the points standings, with Jeff Gordon finished third behind Johnson and Martin, marking the first time and single owner has placed cars in the first three spots.

While three out of the four HMS cars thrived, one, surprisingly, struggled.

As he watched his teammates succeed, Dale Earnhardt Jr. struggled miserably.

After two Nationwide Series (then-Busch Series) championship seasons and a Cup stint for the family owned DEI that produced several wins, Earnhardt Jr. found himself at Hendrick Motorsports at the start of the 2008 season.

His tenure with HMS got off to a good start with Earnhardt Jr. winning the Budweiser Shootout and his Daytona 500 qualifying in his first two runs with HMS.

At least he did get a points win and made the Chase with HMS a year ago.

In 2009, though, Earnhardt Jr. endured a separation from long-time crew chief and cousin Tony Eury Jr. in a season that produced no wins, only two top-fives, and five top-10s through 36 races.

To add insult to injury, Earnhardt Jr. wound up in 25th spot on the season.
Also suffering in 2009 was Richard Childress Racing.

RCR expanded to four teams for the 2009 campaign, up from three.

Despite the extra car, RCR failed to make it to a Sprint Cup victory lane in 2009 and had no representation in the Chase for the first time since the Chase’s inception.

Roush Fenway Racing also had a difficult 2009. Things looked good to start off the season, as Matt Kenseth won two-straight to open the year, including Kenseth and Roush’s first Daytona 500 victory.

That was the end of the celebrating for Kenseth in 2009, though. Those two races were his only two of the year, and he failed to make the Chase for the first time in his career.

Things were a little better for the Roush Fenway organization as a whole, but not much.
After Kenseth’s wins in the first two races of the year, it looked as if Roush would be shut out of victory lane. Another of the team’s drivers, Jamie McMurray, did pull out a win at Talladega Superspeedway in the fall, to finally give the five-car team it’s third and last win of the season.

Fellow-Roush Fenway driver Carl Edwards was one of the other three Roush drivers who didn’t make a trip to victory lane in 2009 -- and that follows a 2008 season during which Edwards was the series’ win leader with nine.

Unlike Kenseth, though, Edwards did manage to make it into the Chase, along with fellow Roush Fenway 2009 winless driver Greg Biffle.

While a few teams were probably glad to see the 2009 season draw to a close, at least a few others had reason to celebrate.

While it’s not necessarily a surprise to see Kasey Kahne in victory lane, it had been awhile since fans have seen Richard Petty’s trademark cowboy hat there.

With Petty Enterprises’ merger with the former Evernham Motorsports prior to the start of 2009, Kahne became a Richard Petty Motorsports driver.

With his first-career road course win, Kahne was able to bring the King to his first victory lane since 1999. Kahne would go on to bring Petty to victory lane a second time before the end of 2009.

Also relishing in the success of 2009 was the newly-formed Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing, especially with the success of its Colombian import -- Juan Pablo Montoya.

In only his third full-time season of competition, Montoya rode a long wave of consistency to the 2009 Chase for the Sprint Cup to become the first-ever foreign-born Chase driver.

Montoya didn’t post a win in 2009, but he did, by far, put together his most successful season in NASCAR, with seven top-fives and 18 top-10 finishes on his way to an eighth-place finish in the points standings.

The 2009 season was so full of surprises that race fans should have plenty to talk and speculate about in the next two months leading up to the 2010 Daytona 500 coming up on Feb. 14, 2010.

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