Five things we never saw coming in the '08 season

While the fact that Jimmie Johnson won a third consecutive championship hardly constituted a surprise in the 2008 Sprint Cup season, it's not like the series didn't have its usual share of eyebrow-raising moments.

There were more, without a doubt, but here are five things we thought we wouldn't see -- but did -- during the 2008 Cup campaign:

Tony's exodus

The general consensus heading into the season was that Tony Stewart would simply re-sign with Joe Gibbs Racing and finish his career there. Even if that was not going to be the case, it was assumed that he at least would finish out the contract he had -- which would take him through 2009.

But that all changed when Haas/CNC Racing, until then only a blip on the NASCAR radar no matter how hard it tried or how much money it poured into attempts to be more, offered Stewart an ownership offer he ultimately could not refuse.

Hence, for no money down, Stewart became co-owner of the newly formed Stewart-Haas Racing organization. Then he hired Ryan Newman to drive a second car for him. The bottom line is that Stewart couldn't turn down the sweetheart deal, plus his passion for driving Chevrolets over Toyotas no doubt sweetened the pot even more from his perspective.

Gordon's goose-egg

Jeff Gordon came into the season as one of the favorites to challenge Johnson's supremacy. He also owned a streak of 14 consecutive seasons with at least two Cup race victories, so it figured that he would win two or more once again.

Then he failed to win a single race. While it's true that he doesn't have the same feel for the new car that was used full-time for the first time in Cup, and that perhaps he's still solidifying his relationship a bit with crew chief Steve Letarte, the fact is that Gordon was in position to win some races early on and didn't. That ended up haunting him later in the year.

Gordon and Letarte didn't go clueless overnight. They won nine races during their first two seasons together, including six in 2007 alone. They still made the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship and finished a respectable seventh in the point standings in '08. All of which makes it even harder to understand why they failed to win any races.

The rise and fall of Kyle Busch

The first half of the Cup season, it was all Kyle Busch, all of the time -- or at least it seemed that way. He cruised to victories in eight of the first 22 races and was the runaway point leader heading into the 10-week Chase.

Then, seemingly as quickly as it all came together, it all fell apart. He sat on the pole for the Chase-opening event at New Hampshire, but finished 34th. Engine failure the next week at Dover led to a 43rd-place finish that dropped him all the way to 12th amongst the Chase contestants.

Meanwhile, Busch kept racking up victories in the Truck and Nationwide series. So what was the deal in Cup? Did the Toyota engines fail him? Did he choke? Or was it a combination of bad luck and the eventual champion, Johnson, turning it on and tuning him out? In the end, it was a remarkable season for young Kyle that will be remembered mostly for the wrong reason.

In good hands with ...

Almost forgotten now is the All-Star race win forged by Kasey Kahne, who actually never should have been in the event. He didn't race his way in, but rather got voted in by the fans.

But the fact is, once in, Kahne took advantage and did what he needed to do to win the lucrative non-points affair. It was a much-needed boost in the arm for Dodge as a manufacturer and for Gillett Evernham Motorsports in particular -- and it's important to note that Kahne then validated the victory further by winning the Coca-Cola 600 the following week and again at Pocono two weeks later.

Those victories in two of the most physically and mentally demanding races in the 36-event season were beacons of hope in an otherwise disappointing overall performance. But Kahne's All-Star win was the most startling, because it seemed to come out of nowhere.

Merger mania

Who could have envisioned that the end as the sport knows them would come for Dale Earnhardt Inc., Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates and, at least it soon appears, Petty Enterprises?

And to call Petty's pending deal with Gillett Evernham Motorsports a "merger" is really a misnomer. It appears that one car -- the famed No. 43 -- will be absorbed into the GEM operation along with a handful or two of personnel and that's about it.

Meanwhile, DEI and Ganassi will become yet another "super" team, although even collectively they lack the credentials of the true superpowers at Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, Joe Gibbs Racing and Richard Childress Racing. It will be interesting to see how much information is shared between Stewart-Haas Racing and Hendrick Motorsports, who already have a loose alliance formed in which Hendrick will continue to supply motors as it did when the organization was Haas/CNC Racing. In the end, there could be a handful of "super super teams" as one long-time racing insider suggested and little else competing at the Cup level, which one would think would not be the best for the sport.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.