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Benny Parsons

Last winter marked a turning point in Kasey Kahne's Nextel Cup career. It led him to a series high six wins in 2006, and he's my choice as the comeback driver of the year on NASCAR's top circuit.

A change in Kahne
Kahne told me that he was so bummed out after the 2005 season that he sat down and did a lot of soul searching. He had a miserable year in which he won only one race, experienced a lot of misfortune, and never got a good handle on the Dodge Charger.

Kahne said he gave a lot of thought to what he had to do to become a better driver. His cars were fast enough, but he felt he wasn't getting it done as a driver.

He determined his problem was that his mindset wasn't locked in to running Cup-length races. Instead, he was approaching these races as he did when running sprint events in the late 1990s. In other words, if Kahne was running sixth, he was consumed by trying to pass the car running fifth. 

That mentality was the result of his sprint background where the races were 50 laps or less, and drivers forced the action and tried to pass right from the start.

In Cup racing Kahne was too aggressive, and sooner or later that would backfire on him and he would find himself in wrecks. He wasn't taking what the race was giving him, he was trying to force things. He lacked patience on the track.

So after his soul searching, Kahne came to the conclusion he would have to change his ways and he did. It dawned on him that in a 400 or 500 mile race, the car ahead of him might drop back out of contention in a few laps. He didn't have to force passes. He could let the race come to him, and make his moves wisely impetuously.

The race Kahne won in Atlanta last March was a perfect example of his new approach to competing. He sat on the pole, but his car was not right from the start. He faded back in the race, but his crew chief and his team kept making adjustments on the car, he kept his patience, and in the last 100 miles of the race no one could touch him. 

The difference in Kahne as a driver is perhaps no more evident than in how he's cut down on getting into trouble on the track. In 2005, he wrecked in 16 of the 36 races. In 2006, he wrecked in only five events.

Driver of the Year
My pick here is Jimmie Johnson, who not only won his first Nextel Cup championship, but also posted five wins including the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400. 

The most impressive thing about Johnson's season was his comeback in the Chase for the Nextel Cup championship. Johnson began the 10-race playoff by wrecking, and finishing 39th in New Hampshire.

What followed were fast cars, but some bad luck and disappointing finishes in the next three races. After four events in the 10-race playoff, Johnson was eighth in the standings, trailing the leader, Jeff Burton, by 156 points.

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Johnson's confidence never waned, and his rally over the final six Chase races was super impressive. He won a race, had four runner-up results, and then came home ninth at Homestead-Miami to take the title.

In the four years prior to 2006, Johnson never finished lower than fifth in the championship standings. He came close to winning the Cup championship, but just couldn't close the deal. I think that made him more motivated this year.

Johnson is sneaky fast -- meaning that even if he's not the first guy you think of when looking at the drivers who do well at a particular track, chances are he's going to show up with a good car, run fast, and have a shot at win more times than not.

Johnson and his team on the No. 48 Chevrolet of Hendrick Motorsports are not flashy -- they just show up and win. Johnson began his Cup career by running three races in 2001. Since then he has won more races (23) than any other driver on NASCAR's top circuit.

In the time he has been on the Cup circuit, Johnson has learned how to run the races at the different tracks, and how to win at them. So it's no surprise he won a championship, and no surprise he is my driver of the year.

Crew Chief of the Year
Last year I split this award between Tony Stewart's crew chief Greg Zipadelli and Doug Richert, who was then crew chief for Greg Biffle. This year there's no split. It goes to Chad Knaus, the crew chief for Jimmie Johnson.

I know a lot of fans may have a problem with this pick since Knaus was suspended by NASCAR for the first four races of this season for a rules violation prior to the Daytona 500. So he wasn't in the pit box when Johnson won that race or when he got to Victory Lane three weeks later in Las Vegas.

But it was the team that Knaus put together that showed it could give Johnson what he needed to win races. So even though Knaus wasn't in the pit box, in a way he was a big part of those two wins.

I also give Knaus much credit for the outstanding rally Johnson staged in the second half of the Chase for the Nextel Cup championship. His winning the title had a lot to do with Knaus' contributions and decisions during that stretch. 

The role of a crew chief also involves keeping up the morale and spirits of the team members. We saw an excellent example of this from Knaus through the first month of the playoff when things weren't going all that well for Johnson.

Through the five years they have been together, Johnson and Knaus have developed a mutual respect. The drivers are the stars, and there aren't many crew chiefs that feel like they can tell a driver when they think he's making a mistake. Knaus can do that with Johnson, and that works to the advantage of the team.