BY MONTE DUTTON, AOL

HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Jimmie Johnson won a third consecutive Sprint Cup (OK, purists, the first was Nextel), marking the second time it's ever happened (Cale Yarborough, 1976-78) and staking Johnson's claim as one of NASCAR's all-time greats.

Domination by the 33-year-old Johnson is nothing new. During the span of his seven-year career, Johnson has won nearly twice as many races (40, to Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon's 23 and Tony Stewart's 21) as anyone else. He leads in championships (3-2 over Stewart) and top-10 finishes (156-146 over Gordon), as well.

The two most recent titles have been runaways lessened only by Johnson's cautious approach to the final race. Carl Edwards won Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway and took three of the last four, but he entered the Ford 400 trailing Johnson by 141 points and narrowed the final margin to 69.

In the words of crew chief Chad Knaus, "In my eyes, he (Johnson) is the best there's ever been."

While Knaus, the architect of Johnson's faultless strategy, is hardly objective, the facts speak for themselves. Johnson's career is too young to merit a final conclusion, but from the first time he strapped himself behind the wheel of a Cup car, he has been the sport's most successful figure, overshadowed only by exposure, not results.

What happens next? Does NASCAR's fan base turn to Johnson, granting him the type of adulation previously reserved for drivers like Dale Earnhardt Jr., Gordon and Stewart, or does Johnson continue to play the role of the Green Bay Packers' Bart Starr, who, during his career, won more NFL championships than any other quarterback while being overshadowed by the likes of John Unitas and Fran Tarkenton?

Johnson and Knaus are alone in mastering NASCAR's Chase formula for determining a champion. The formula separates 12 drivers from the rest, places overriding emphasis on the final 10 races and makes it more difficult for one driver to run away from the field.

Unless, of course, that one driver is Johnson, who has beaten a system designed for excitement at the expense of fairness three years in a row. The last two have been particularly instructive. In neither year did Johnson appear to be the favorite at regular season's end. In both he won the final two regular-season races, setting the scene for a dominating run in the Chase.

The 2007 championship came at Gordon's expense. This year the worthiest opponent was Carl Edwards, who fell shy mainly because he touched off a catastrophic wreck in the Chase's fourth race, at Talladega, and fell further behind a week later when an ignition problem relegated him to 33rd place at Charlotte. Edwards left the latter trailing Johnson by 168 points. During the latter half of the Chase, Edwards whittled away 99 of those points (oddly, his car number), but Johnson left no opening. His average finish in the Chase was 5.7. A year ago it was 5.0. Both drivers won three of the 10 races, but Edwards' average was 7.7, which, by the way, would've won every Chase but the last two.

There were, however, more issues to contemplate than just the utter domination of Johnson:

Much ado about nothing

NASCAR's signature race is the season-opening Daytona 500. When Ryan Newman won it and Penske Racing teammate Kurt Busch finished second, it seemed to signal some resurgence in both the Dodge and Penske camps. In retrospect, it was an anomaly. Busch won once -- he pulled a New Hampshire race out of the hat with superior mileage -- but, for the most part, he and Newman almost disappeared after Daytona.

Rise and fall

Entering the Chase, it seemed as if Kyle Busch, Kurt's younger brother, might be the favorite instead of Johnson. Busch won eight of the 26 regular-season races, including the first-ever for Toyota at Atlanta on March 9. But Busch -- and, for that matter, Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Stewart and Denny Hamlin -- disappeared during the Chase. They began the Chase seeded first, sixth and eighth. They finished eighth, ninth and 10th.

Hard times

As NASCAR chairman Brian France finally admitted, "NASCAR, as an industry, is not immune" to the sudden decline in the country's economic fortunes. By the time the season ended, teams were laying off employees -- some placed the toll, industry-wide, at 800 -- and combining resources. Empty seats became the norm at most tracks. Down the stretch, NASCAR officials routinely padded attendance estimates by as many as 25,000. France's words all acknowledged that the sport's long boom is over. So, perhaps, is the Age of Arrogance. France no longer talks much about NASCAR replacing pro football as the country's biggest sport.

Who did you say was winless?

How about Jeff Gordon, who has won 81 times? How about Matt Kenseth, a former champion? How about Kevin Harvick, who finished fourth in the Chase anyway. Parity disappeared as three drivers -- Edwards (9), Kyle Busch (8) and Johnson (7) -- combined to win two-thirds of the races. Only four teams -- Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, Richard Childress Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing -- placed drivers in the Chase.

The overlooked mistake

When NASCAR implemented its new car design, the size of fuel tanks was reduced by about 20 percent. That meant more fuel stops, more meaningless lead changes (when the lead passed to a succession of drivers as the leaders pitted), more convenient commercial opportunities for television and more races decided on the basis of going slow (to conserve fuel) instead of fast. The real quality of racing -- as opposed to the bogus numbers -- suffered as a result.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose

It all evened out for Stewart, who narrowly avoided going winless for the first time in his career. At Daytona, he fell victim to the drafting cooperation of Newman and Kurt Busch on the final lap. During the Chase, Stewart got the big payback at Talladega, like Daytona a restrictor-plate track. Rookie Regan Smith passed Stewart at the end, but NASCAR officials penalized Smith for driving below a yellow line at the bottom of the track. Stewart had finished second six times at Talladega. When he finally won, he also crossed the line second.

Oh, yeah, the final race

--Edwards, in an almost mirror image of his victory two weeks earlier in Texas, led the most laps at Homestead-Miami Speedway but had to rely on superior fuel mileage to win the Ford 400. Edwards' ability to squeeze more miles out of his fuel -- he made it 103.5 miles at Texas and 100.5 at Homestead -- is the envy of his peers, not just in the sport but within the Roush Fenway team. Kenseth, who had pitted at the same time, ran out of gas with just less than four laps remaining. "The '99' can't do anything wrong, and we can't do anything right," said Kenseth. "I don't understand how he can make power and still get that much better fuel mileage than us."

--NASCAR, which had been talking with teams about expanding testing as recently as July, took the rather dramatic cost-saving measure of banning testing altogether at tracks where the ruling body sanctions races in five series. The new rules mean the end of preseason testing at Daytona next January.

--This was the second consecutive year the final standings would have been closer had the Chase format not been in place and the season-long system last used in 2003 been the means of determining a champion. Under a full-season format, Edwards would have entered the final race trailing Johnson by 56 points, meaning that the Homestead victory would have put him up by 16. Had the circumstances been different, of course, Johnson might have taken a different, less conservative strategy. Three of the five Chase seasons would have ended differently had the old system still been in place, assuming results had been the same.

--The only three Cup championships of Cale Yarborough's career were the three he won in a row.

--Johnson is the eighth NASCAR driver to win at least three championships at the Cup level. The others were Gordon, Yarborough, Richard Petty, Lee Petty, Dale Earnhardt Sr., David Pearson and Darrell Waltrip. Petty and Earnhardt won seven each, and Gordon has won four.