BY MONTE DUTTON, AOL

What Jimmie Johnson achieved, in terms of reputation, by winning his third straight Sprint Cup championship was an unquestioned status as the best in the business. The fact that his was NASCAR's best team had already been established.

Johnson wasn't head-and-shoulders above everyone else. Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch enjoyed breakout years. Johnson's greatest achievement is his utter mastery of the Chase format. Edwards and Busch won more races. The big story, really, was the domination of that trio, which combined to win two thirds of the races. Only 12 drivers won races all year, four fewer than 2007 and three less than 2006 and '05.

By year's end, attendance and television ratings were tailing off. A similarly sagging national economy, brazenly ignored a year earlier by NASCAR's best and brightest, bore the brunt of the blame. Whether that's completely true, or whether the bloom has faded from the NASCAR rose, remains to be seen.

With apologies to Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone, here's one method of evaluating the 2008 season:

THE GOOD

--Johnson's average finish in the Chase was 5.7, which was the second-best ever -- well, the Chase has been around for only five years. The best: Johnson averaged 5.0 a year earlier. Edwards' performance would have won any Chase except the last two. Kyle Busch won more than 30 percent of the regular-season races, which might, in retrospect, have been spectacularly bad timing. Nonetheless, it was impressive.

--Busch, who had never fared particularly well on road courses, won both of them this year. Since the races at Infineon (Sonoma, Calif.) and Watkins Glen (N.Y.) have in recent years been dominated by Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, it was good for the sport to have another driver demonstrate such skill.

--The new car, fully implemented this year, generally produced quality races on restrictor-plate tracks (Daytona and Talladega), road courses and short tracks (Bristol, Martinsville and Richmond).

--Johnson tied a 30-year-old record by winning a third straight championship. The only previous driver to win three straight titles was Cale Yarborough (1976-78). Only eight drivers have won three or more championships in their careers. Yarborough's three straight were his only three. The record is shared by Richard Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt, both of whom won seven.

--The manufacturer race was the closest in years. Chevrolet won the points competition, but the victory totals -- Chevrolet 11, Ford 11, Toyota 10, Dodge 4 -- reflected parity (though notably not for Dodge), in no small part because the cars are virtually identical.

THE BAD

--For the first time, all 10 Chase races were won by Chase drivers. As a practical matter, this meant that many drivers and teams got almost no exposure during the championship stretch. Some lost sponsorships as a result, and their prospects for finding new ones were diminished.

--The outcome of the Daytona 500 played practically no role in the rest of the season. By season's end, the winner of NASCAR's biggest race, Ryan Newman, had left Penske Racing, and the runner-up, teammate Kurt Busch, finished 18th in points. That was one position behind Newman.

--Some really big names -- Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth, Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr. and Juan Pablo Montoya -- failed to win a race. For Gordon, it was the first time since 1993.

--The rookie class, touted as the most impressive in history, performed miserably. By season's end, only two, Regan Smith and Sam Hornish Jr., were left, and the principal reason Smith won the Raybestos Rookie of the Year Award was the fact that Hornish failed to qualify for the final race.

--Too many races were won by tortoises, not hares. The most overlooked mistake in recent history was NASCAR's decision to reduce the fuel-tank capacity by about 20 percent. That led to more pit stops, meaningless lead changes (leader pits, runner-up assumes the lead, he pits, third-place takes over, etc.), unofficial TV timeouts and cars coasting to a halt at the end of races.

THE UGLY

--The second most prestigious race, the Allstate 400 at Indianapolis, was an embarrassment. The tires furnished by Goodyear were so bad that caution flags had to be waved every dozen laps or so to prevent them from exploding. It was the saddest spectacle in memory, and the unfortunate fans who chose to attend got nothing but lip service for their frustrations.

--Two "plate races" ended in anticlimax, with last-lap crashes preventing exciting finishes from occurring. Montoya never got to make a charge on Kyle Busch in the spring at Talladega, and Busch won again in the summer at Daytona because the crash occurred behind the leaders as Edwards was moving alongside to attempt a pass.

--Smith, the rookie who would go through the entire season without a single top-10 finish, took the checkered flag first in the latter Talladega race, only to have officials rule his trioval pass of Tony Stewart improper. The decision was controversial, and a penalty relegated Smith to 18th place.

--The most glaring example of a fuel-mileage race occurred in the first visit to New Hampshire, where Kurt Busch won a race in which he might not otherwise have finished in the top 10.

--The new car was supposedly designed to minimize the effect of "aero push," the phenomenon where the car out front, in "clean air," establishes a pivotal advantage. If anything, on intermediate tracks, aero push was measurably worse. Edwards led the most laps in two of the season's final three races but won only because he adopted a fuel-conservation strategy once his car got trapped in traffic. In both cases, the winning driver drove the slowest car on the track when he took the checkered flag.