Five things we learned at Phoenix

Jimmie Johnson will three-peat as long as he finishes 36th or better at Homstead next weekend. Getty Images

Five things we learned at Phoenix International Raceway:

1. Jimmie Johnson will three-peat.

Not that there was much doubt about this heading into the race on Sunday, but Johnson's dominating performance at PIR essentially locked up the championship. After winning for the seventh time this season, Johnson merely has to finish 36th or better at the final race of the season on Sunday and he'll be the champ. Considering that Johnson has finished no lower than 15th in the Chase, it's hard to envision a scenario in which he doesn't win the title.

"I'm going to keep fighting," said Carl Edwards, who finished fourth. "It's not probable that I will win the championship, but I still think it's possible."

Yes, Edwards is still mathematically alive, as he trails Johnson by 141 points. (The most points a driver can make up in one race is 161.) But Johnson can afford to be overly cautious at Homestead. He'll likely stay close to his three Hendrick Motorsports teammates for most of the afternoon and do everything in his power to stay out of harm's way. Add it all up and I'd say there's a 99.9 percent chance that Johnson wins his third straight championship on Sunday.

2. Carl Edwards has a very bright future.

I spent some time with Edwards after the race and we chatted about 2009. "I'm so excited," Edwards said. "I feel like we've proven a lot this year and [my crew chief] Bob [Osborne] and I are really clicking."

What makes Edwards a title threat is that he now can run well at every type of track that the Sprint Cup circuit visits. He's always flourished on the 1.5-mile ovals, but this season he's proven that he can also rip off top-five finishes at short tracks and road courses. "If there's anyone who can catch Jimmie next year it's Carl," says Darrell Waltrip. "He and Bob have really matured together as a driver and crew chief and their chemistry is something special. Keep an eye on these guys in 2009."

3. Jeff Gordon isn't going to win a race this season.

It hasn't happened since his rookie season of 1993, but in all likelihood Gordon won't make a single trip to Victory Lane this year. He had a fast car on Sunday, but he suffered an engine failure two-thirds of the way through the race and finished 41st. As Gordon said in the garage afterward, this was typical of his season: Just when it appears he has a shot of winning, something goes wrong.

Can Gordon end his drought at Homestead? Unlikely. In nine career starts at Homestead, Gordon has never won there and his average finish is 10.6. What's more, he and crew chief Steve Letarte appear to be completely out of synch. All season long Gordon has had a handling problem with his No. 24 Chevy, and no matter what he and Letarte try to do to solve the issue, they can't. What's got to make this even more frustrating for Letarte is that the No. 24 team is housed under the same roof at Hendrick Motorsports as Johnson's No. 48 team. The two teams have an open-book policy and share every drip of information in their notebooks, but while Johnson and Co. dominate, Letarte and Gordon struggle. Letarte's job is safe -- for now.

4. Greg Biffle's surprising run at the championship ended quietly.

After winning the first two races of the Chase, Biffle looked like he'd be in title contention all the way to Homestead. Well, it didn't happen. Biffle had to go to the back of the field at the start of the race on Sunday because his team changed his transmission after qualifying, and Biffle could never dig out of this hole. He wound up 11th but was officially eliminated from the championship.

Still, Biffle's performance in the Chase was the biggest surprise of the postseason. He had been consistently above average during the first 26 races of the season, but there was nothing about Biffle that suggested he was going to come on during the Chase. The fact that he did bodes well for him next season. He and Carl Edwards will form a dynamic one-two punch for Roush Fenway Racing in 2009, and if they continue to work together like they have during the Chase, perhaps Roush Fenway will end Hendrick Motorsports' stranglehold on the Cup.

5. Parity is not alive and well in NASCAR.

This season the three super-power teams of the sport -- Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing -- have combined to win 29 of the 35 races. When NASCAR rolled out the Car of Tomorrow in 2007, the governing body hoped that having single car that could be used at all the types of tracks would reduce costs for all the teams and narrow the gap between the haves and the have-nots. It didn't happened. Instead, the teams with the most resources are still the ones winning the races. Midweek testing has become more important than ever in NASCAR, and the deep-pocketed teams simply can afford to test more than the rest of the garage. As a consequence, the big teams have more data on the CoT and a better understanding of how to find speed in the car.

What to do about this? NASCAR should limit testing on all tracks. As it stands, NASCAR does have a cap on the number of tests teams can do at tracks that the circuit visits, but teams can test as much as they want on tracks at which NASCAR doesn't race. If NASCAR eliminated this practice altogether, it would be a big boost to the little guys.