by Darrell Waltrip

Updated: September 17, 2007, 5:06 PM EST 28 comments

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Somebody is going to hit the combination on the new car every week. When a driver hits it — just like Clint Bowyer did on Sunday — he's in a league of his own.

Bowyer's crew chief, Gil Martin, is an old buddy of mine from back in the day. He started in Nashville with Filbert Martocci and Bobby Hamilton. He worked with Kenny Wallace in the Busch Series. It was good to see Gil get his third win as a Cup crew chief, and it was certainly good to see Bowyer get his first Cup win.

The second-year driver hadn't won a race all year, and he was going into the Chase as the underdog. One win is not going to make you the favorite, but it sure does make you feel better about being in the Chase and winning the title.

I'm sure that they were feeling pretty dejected and down going into the Chase with people saying, "He hasn't even won a race. He's a long shot. He's a dark horse." Well, he went from a long shot and a dark horse to a contender. How serious a contender he is remains to be seen.

Martin Truex Jr.'s first career win turned him around and made him a championship contender. Bowyer has the equipment with Richard Childress Racing cars capable of winning races every week, so it'll be interesting to see how this win propels him forward. It certainly took a lot of pressure off of Bowyer, Childress and Martin. Now, not only are they in the Chase, but they're winners in the Chase. That's a great accomplishment.

Over the radio, Bowyer said that he wanted to take his winning car to Dover. Martin said that wouldn't be possible because NASCAR is still really finicky about the cars — what people are doing to them and what's happening to them. The car was confiscated after the race. They tore it apart at the track. Then, they took the car back to NASCAR's Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C. to recertify it. That takes a while — all day Monday and probably part of Tuesday — so they're not going to be able to turn around that car and take it to Dover.

Martin said they had another car equally as good, but I can relate to Bowyer. From a driver's perspective, I always thought, "Man, I won on Sunday in that thing. Let's run it again next week."

On the other hand, Truex didn't take his Dover car to New Hampshire. He's been saving that car for this week's race at Dover, where he dominated in the spring. It could be a big advantage for him because he definitely smoked everybody at the Monster Mile just like Bowyer smoked the field at the Magic Mile.

COT is hit and miss

The Achilles' heel for a number of guys like Bowyer, Kyle Busch and Truex Jr. is the ability to get consistent top-five and top-10 finishes. They're sporadic. They run well one week, and then they fall out, wreck or get in trouble the next. These cars are so fickle, and they're evolving. Nobody has been able to pinpoint what these cars need from one race to the next.

One week you hit it, and you're really good. The next week you miss it, and you're out to lunch. As dominant as Bowyer's car was, his RCR teammates ran 17th and 18th. Kevin Harvick had a little bit of a problem, but Jeff Burton didn't have any problems that I was aware of. They were out to lunch most of the day. Stewart ran third, and his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin — who has been really good in the Car of Tomorrow and won at Loudon in July — ran 15th.

Ryan Newman ran well, and it's hard to say how Kurt Busch would have been because he had engine problems. By the way, taking out a spark plug is an old short track trick. As long as that spark plug is in the hole and isn't firing, it builds pressure. It actually slows down the engine. When a cylinder goes bad, just pull out the spark plug. It didn't run great, but Busch hung around and finished 25th. That's better than a DNF.

Back in the day, I won a feature at Nashville on seven cylinders. We had a rocker arm problem that we couldn't fix, and the feature was about to start so we pulled out the spark plug. The thing just blew, but it didn't build up any compression. It sounded like a John Deere tractor, but it ran a whole lot better than it would have if the plug had been there. Building compression in the hole probably would have shaken apart the engine.

You've got to look at the dominance of the Hendrick Motorsports cars. All four Hendrick drivers finished in the top 10, which demonstrates that they have the most consistent feel for the Car of Tomorrow. Those guys are going to continue to rack up top-five and top-10 finishes, and that's what it's going to take to win the championship.

Final four?

Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon are tied as they go into the second race. Tony Stewart is right there, 10 points back. Bowyer certainly made a huge jump from 12th to 4th, only 15 points behind. Kyle Busch has as good a chance as anybody to pull off the championship with a fast car; he's 35 points off of the lead.

Gordon finished second. Stewart finished third. Johnson was sixth, and Matt Kenseth was seventh. Those drivers are going to be in the top 10 every week. That's going to be their strong suit, and that's why they're the favorites. They're consistent, yes, but they're also fast. And they can win races. If you get in trouble — like Kurt Busch did at Loudon — you've got to come back and win a couple of races to offset that big deficit. That's why I like Gordon, Stewart, Johnson and Kenseth. Not only are they the most consistent drivers, they can pull out a win when they need to. That's what makes them so hard to beat.

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Comeback Carl

A lot of people gave me a lot of heat for saying Carl Edwards could win both the Busch and Cup championships. It's not a bad prediction. He got in trouble on Friday and wrecked his car, which made me look and feel pretty bad. But he came right back with a strong run on Sunday, finishing 12th in his backup car. With practice rained out on Saturday, the only laps he ever got in that car before the race were in qualifying.

He started the race cold turkey, and the No. 99 team did a whale of a job to bring that car home in the top 15. Right now, he's 63 points out of the lead, and that's right on the verge of being manageable. Denny Hamlin is 82 back. Kevin Harvick is 88 behind. I wouldn't want to start looking at a 100-point deficit just one race into this deal. I would be concerned if I were Jeff Burton (91 points back) and Kurt Busch (102). They're going to have to be really cautious the next couple of weeks and not fall any further behind, or you can count them out.

Oh, by the way

Last week, the NFL handed down a huge $500,000 fine to New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick and a $250,000 fine plus the loss of draft picks to them. Then the Formula 1 McLaren team received the most unbelievable fine that I've ever heard of in my life for "industrial espionage".

Those fines make our crew chiefs messing around with bolts on a wing or wide fenders look like misdemeanors when you compare them to what these other sports are willing to do to try to get a winning advantage. I've always defended our NASCAR crew members. They're all out there trying to play within the rules but play within the rules a little bit better than anybody else. They get their hands slapped every now and then.

But after what happened in the NFL — the No. 1 sport in America — and Formula 1 — the world-renowned racing series — it makes NASCAR's infractions look like child's play. People always accuse NASCAR of being a bunch of cheaters. I thought it was pretty ironic that the two biggest sports in the world ended up with two of the biggest fines in the world. Our guys are not in the same league with those two infractions.