Someone different wins a NASCAR race

The same handful of drivers seems to win pretty much every NASCAR race. Jimmie Johnson. Denny Hamlin. Kyle Busch. Kurt Busch. Kevin Harvick.

Then there are the handful of drivers who haven't won in a while but you figure will soon. Jeff Gordon. Tony Stewart. Carl Edwards. Mark Martin. Jeff Burton.

And then there are the former stars who still occassionally win, or who at the very least draw attention to themselves or the sport. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Ryan Newman are two such examples.

So it's good to see when someone that gets no attention from both the casual sports media and the hardcore NASCAR media win a race and that's exactly what happened yesterday, when David Reutimann took the checkered flag in the Sprint Cup race at Chicago. It was just the second win of Reutimann's career and the first time he actually drove to victory lane. His first win, last year's Coca-Cola 600, was won when he opted to stay out during a caution right as the rain began to come. During the caution, the race was halted and never started up again, giving him a rain-shortened win in a race that took two days to complete 227 of the 400 laps.

So this was the first time Reutimann got to win in a spontaneous way, in a real way. He didn't get lucky because of rain. He outraced everyone else for the first time in his career and it was really cool to see the emotion he had in doing so. Sure, he was happy to win at Charlotte last year but you could tell this one meant more to him because it was a full race.

With seven races left until the Chase, Reutimann is now in position to leap into the top 12 to qualify. The win moved him up to 15th in the standings, 96 points behind 12th place Clint Bowyer. The current top 12, in order, are Harvick, Gordon, Johnson, Hamlin, Kurt Busch, Kyle Busch, Burton, Matt Kenseth, Stewart, Edwards, Greg Biffle and Bowyer, with Junior in 13th and Martin 14th.

I maintain that wins are undervalued in the Chase format. Gordon is second without a win this season, ahead of Johnson and Hamlin who each have won five times this season. Gordon, Burton, Kenseth, Stewart, Edwards, Biffle and Bowyer each are in the top 12 without a win this season while Reutimann, Newman and McMurray aren't despite winning a race. It's idiotic.