NASCAR Cup Series

Driver of the year

Published Dec. 2, 2010 12:00 a.m. ET

Darrell Waltrip

Editor’s note: In anticipation of the Sprint Cup Series Awards Ceremony (9 p.m. ET on SPEED), the NASCAR on FOXSports.com team will be handing out its own awards throughout the week. Make sure to check every day as we celebrate the top performances of 2010.

Ever since the checkered flag fell at Homestead, people have asked me my opinion of who the Driver of the Year should be. You can actually make an argument for a couple of guys.

Let’s face it, Denny Hamlin had a great year. He won the most races with eight victories. He, more than anyone, put a lot of pressure on that entire No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports bunch. If you remember, he was the pick by a lot of folks before the 2010 season started to be the one to dethrone Jimmie Johnson. Boy did he come close. For all the success he had, Denny certainly deserves to be considered as the Driver of the Year.

However, the one major characteristic of the Driver of the Year is he has to be a good closer. When the pressure is on, he’s the one who rises to the occasion and comes out ahead. Being able to take your game to another level when the chips are down is a major characteristic of that driver.

You’ve heard me say it for a number of years now, that when it comes down to the end of the race and when it comes time to close the deal, well, Jimmie Johnson is one of the best closers I have ever seen. Just look at the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway a couple weeks ago. He proved it once again.

I thought his performance at Homestead was surprising. I didn’t expect him to run that good. Clearly, though, it was a performance worthy of a five-time champion. So when you go to look at other candidates for Driver of the Year, you have to compare them to Jimmie. How do they stack up against him? Because he clearly is the benchmark.

In the final race of the year, with everything on the line, Jimmie gave a championship-winning performance. Unfortunately, Denny didn’t, so the edge has to go to Jimmie.

There certainly are other candidates.

Kyle Busch deserves to be considered. We all rave about what a great driver Kyle is. He’s clearly a showman. When he’s in a Cup or Nationwide car or in a Camping World Truck, Kyle is putting on a show. If we had more Kyle Busches racing, they wouldn’t need seats in the grandstands because folks would never sit down. He does things behind the wheel I have seen very few people do.

He has cat-like skills. He can go high, middle, low and three- to four-wide in a heartbeat. He simply has amazing skills. His car control is truly phenomenal. He did things in the Nationwide Series this year that have never been done before. He started his own Truck team this year. He won a truckload of races and also was able to win the Truck owners championship in his team’s very first year of existence.

Those are all great accomplishments, so you easily can see why he deserves consideration as Driver of the Year.

However, I am old school, and you have to separate his work in the Truck and Nationwide series from the Cup side. Those two series are the minor leagues. I don’t mean that in an unkind way, but the pinnacle of our sport is the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

That’s where Jimmie Johnson races and that’s our premier series. So despite all the impressive things Kyle does in the other two series, for a Driver of the Year nod, I can look only at what he does in Cup. Kyle had only three wins and finished eighth in the points, so the edge goes to Jimmie again.

You’ve heard me tell you recently about how I let a championship slip away in 1979 to Richard Petty. I entered the last race with a two-point lead and lost the championship by 11 points. I didn’t get a lot of breaks from NASCAR because I had a bad attitude. So anytime there was an opportunity to knock me down a peg, people took great pleasure in doing that.

Kyle is exactly like I was back when I was younger. He will very easily tell you he is No. 1. So I have to look at attitude. Mine was bad then and his is bad now. To be fair, Kyle was a lot better this year than in 2009. He still has to get those emotions under control. He simply has got to get control of his temper and doing things on the race track.

By continuing to aggravate folks, Kyle won’t get a break when he needs one. Like you saw with his run-in with Kevin Harvick, when an accident could have been avoided, it wasn’t. That has to be attributed to his attitude and how he races others at times.

Other than a run-in with his teammate Jeff Gordon at Texas, I don’t know of any controversial situation Jimmie was a part of this year. Jimmie has a champion’s attitude that Kyle still lacks. I think that’s an important factor in being named Driver of the Year because you are the No. 1 representative of our sport. You are the face of our sport.

See, the thing is, you never have to make excuses for Jimmie Johnson. He handles himself well and is always the consummate gentleman. His reputation is spotless. I think that’s part of having a great attitude and being a great champion.

Another one that I believe has earned the consideration for Driver of the Year is Jamie McMurray. He jumped in that No. 1 Earnhardt Ganassi Racing car this year and the results were phenomenal. Right out of the box, he won our Super Bowl — the Daytona 500. Then he goes and wins the Brickyard 400. Jamie should have been in the Chase, but unfortunately he failed to qualify for it.

That doesn’t detract from Jamie’s incredible comeback year.

When you speak of comebacks, you also have to talk about Kevin Harvick and the No. 29 team. What a truly phenomenal comeback season for that Richard Childress Racing team. To me, that was probably one of the biggest one-year turnarounds I have ever seen in our sport.

Think about what that entire RCR organization did in only one year. They went from having no cars in the 2009 Chase to having all three cars in the 2010 Chase. All three cars were very competitive this year with two of them winning races. Kevin and that No. 29 team never stopped fighting right up to the checkered flag at Homestead and finished a very strong third.

One of the main factors that can’t be overlooked in Jimmie’s success is the owner Jimmie drives for. Rick Hendrick continues to put together people and combinations that win races and championships. That is so hard to do on a consistent basis. Rick, in fact, just became the winningest championship owner in NASCAR history. Yes, that is on top of his five consecutive years with Jimmie.

So my Driver of the Year is Jimmie Johnson, hands down. It comes down to a lot of things. First, obviously, is performance, and Jimmie’s got it. It comes down to attitude, and Jimmie’s got it. It comes down to consistency, and Jimmie’s got it.

Now I said this at the beginning of 2010, and here in a few weeks I will say it again at the beginning of 2011 — until someone steps up and shows me they can beat that No. 48, then Jimmie is once again the odds-on-favorite to repeat. Even as good as the Nos. 11 and 29 were this year, they couldn’t close the deal. It’s hard to stay at the top year after year, but folks, it’s even harder to get there. If someone finally can do that and knock Jimmie off, well then they have done something spectacular.

So my Driver of the Year, hands down, is the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup champion for the fifth consecutive year in a row, driver of the No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet, Jimmie Johnson.