Congratulations on his winning Rookie of the Year. It was a great field of rookie's this year. He also broke Tony Stewart’s record for highest finish by a rookie in the point’s standings. I can't wait to see what Denny's got for us next year. The combo of he, Mike Ford, FedEx, and JGR is awesome! I'm not predicting a sophomore slump for him, that's for sure.

That said, let's compare his last 10 races in his rookie year to Tony’s last 10 races in 1999 (Tony’s rookie year). With 10 races to go, Denny was 30 points behind the leader compared to Tony’s 377 point deficit. Tony scored 1578 vs. Denny’s 1377. Tony had 3 wins and an average finish of 10th place. Denny’s average finish was 12.1 and his highest finish was one 2nd. In fact, Tony’s “chase” stats in his rookie year were better than all the chasers this year; including Jimmie. It's pretty obvious that Tony had much more to overcome to get higher in the rankings in '99 than Denny did this year.

Am I looking to put an asterisk on Denny’s record? No, but there’s 88 more days until Daytona, and I’d like to occupy this space with something in the interim. The record book is full of asterisks labeling stats from before and during the modern era of NASCAR, as there were very drastic changes in the early ‘70s. The Chase format was a huge change in how we crown our champion, and will inevitably bring on a few asterisks.