Tire issues make Brickyard a caution-filled bore

Thanks to constant caution flags, Jimmie Johnson won perhaps the least-competitive Brickyard in recent memory. AP

Five things we learned this weekend at the Brickyard in Indianapolis, including who's going to be driving Tony Stewart's old car next season for Joe Gibbs Racing when Stewart moves to Stewart Haas Racing.

1. Jimmie Johnson -- surprise, surprise -- is starting to heat up as the Chase nears.

All season long Johnson, the two-time defending champ, told anyone who asked not to worry about his uncharacteristically slow start. Remember the Las Vegas race back in March? Johnson was three seconds off the pace -- a country mile in the world of NASCAR -- and finished 29th. Las Vegas has always been a good barometer to gauge which teams will run well for the rest of the season, and after his Sin City nightmare it looked like Johnson's bid to three-peat was in serious jeopardy.

But Johnson and his crew chief Chad Knaus have steadily found speed in their No. 48 Chevy. They tested as much as anyone in the spring, and that work is now bearing fruit. (Of course, having access to the near bottomless resources of Hendrick Motorsports hasn't hurt either.) Johnson finished second at Chicagoland two weeks ago, and this weekend he dominated from the moment his car rolled off the hauler. He won the pole, was fastest in Happy Hour practice, and led a race-high 71 laps in taking his second checkered flag of the season.

More and more, it's looking the championship battle will come down to four drivers: Johnson, Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Busch, who leads the Cup series both in the standings and in wins, with seven, remains the driver to beat. But Johnson made quite a statement on Sunday. After all, six of the last nine winners at the Brickyard have gone on to win the Cup.

2. This year's Brickyard race was the worst in the 15 years NASCAR has been coming to Indy.

During practice on Saturday afternoon drivers and crew chiefs knew something was very, very wrong when the Goodyear tires on the cars started to wear down after just five or six laps. There had been tire issues at Indy before, but Goodyear officials confidently said that as soon as tire rubber was laid down on the track during the race, the problem would be solved as the grooves in the surface would fill in with rubber.

Well, it didn't happen. Because of extreme tire wear, NASCAR had to throw six competition yellow flags so that the cars could come to pit road to get new tires. The longest green flag run was a mere 12 laps, which didn't sit well with the roughly 200,000 fans. And it shouldn't have. In the seven years I've been covering the sport, this was by far the most boring, least competitive, most sleep-inducing race I've attended. Clearly, NASCAR, track officials and Goodyear have much testing to do before next year's event to insure another tire debacle doesn't occur.

3. Joey Logano will be piloting the No. 20 Toyota in 2009 for JGR.

A source within the Gibbs organization confirmed to SI.com on Sunday that it's "99 percent certain" that Logano will replace Stewart next season. Greg Zipadelli, Stewart' s longtime crew chief, will stay with the team and make the calls from Logano's pit box. Is this too much, too soon for the 18-year-old Logano? In a word, no.

Logano has been Gibbs' main test driver this season, and he's probably turned more laps in test sessions in the Car of Tomorrow than anyone else on the planet. "Joey just has blown us all away in every test," says one member of JGR. "He's unbelievably talented and he's really good kid as well. There's not a person in our organization who has a bad thing to say about him."

Logano has already shined in the Nationwide Series. In six starts for Gibbs in the triple-A of NASCAR he has one win, two second-place finishes, and five top-10s, including an eighth place on Saturday night at O'Reilly Raceway Park (ORP) in Indy. Given that he'll be in superior equipment next season, you can go ahead and pencil him in as your 2009 rookie of the year.

4. Martin Truex Jr. is staying at DEI.

According to several sources, Truex has decided to sign a two-year contract with DEI rather than move to a new team in 2009. No terms have been disclosed, but I'm guessing that DEI threw a mountain of money at Truex, because that's what it was going to take to keep him on the team.

A year after qualifying for the Chase and winning his first race of his career, Truex is currently 17th in the standings, winless, has led a grand total of 17 laps, and is a long shot to make NASCAR's ten-race playoff. The DEI Chevys have been relatively quiet this season -- they've yet to seriously contend for a victory -- and there was much speculation in the garage that Truex was headed either for Penske Racing or Richard Childress Racing in '09. In the end, though, Truex stayed with DEI, which is the first positive news this team has had in a long time.

Ever since Dale Earnhardt Jr. left the team his father founded at the end of last season, there's been the perception that DEI was on its deathbed. But Truex, who won two Nationwide championships, is the kind of driver around which an organization can build. If the engine alliance between DEI and Richard Childress Racing can bear more fruit next season, Truex should be more competitive. Will he compete for the title? Unlikely. But he should contend for a spot in the Chase.

5. Kyle Busch is making history.

On Saturday night at IRP Busch won his sixth Nationwide race of the season. Combined with his seven wins the Cup series and two in the Trucks, Busch now has 16 victories in NASCAR's top three series in 2008, breaking the modern-era (which dates back to 1972) record of 15 held by Kevin Harvick, which he set in 2006. What's more, Busch did this after NASCAR officials on Wednesday ordered Toyota to cut 15 horsepower from its engines. How did this rule change affect Busch? Well, all he did was capture the pole and then lead all but three laps in winning the race.

"We wanted to come out here this weekend and sort of get a little sweet revenge on everybody," Busch said afterward. "It turned out that way, and it worked out in our favor."

On Sunday at the Brickyard Busch finished a quiet 15th. Don't expect him to remain silent for long. He'll have something to prove on Sunday at Pocono, where in June he finished dead last in what was obviously his worst race of the season.