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Five-Time Champion Barely Edges Edwards, Gordon, Stewart<\/strong><\/p>\n DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Feb. 16, 2012) \u2013 Undoubtedly, Jimmie Johnson would like to forget that the 2011 season ever happened. Apparently, voters in NASCARMedia.com\u2019s annual preseason poll already have.<\/p>\n Members of NASCARMedia.com picked Johnson to reign supreme once again \u2013 despite a career-low sixth-place finish in the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series points.<\/p>\n Johnson received 147 votes in the annual preseason poll, just two more than Carl Edwards, who finished second in last season\u2019s championship points. Rounding out the top 12: defending champion Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch Brad Keselowski, Kasey Kahne, Denny Hamlin, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Matt Kenseth and Greg Biffle.<\/p>\n Voting among the top four was especially close, as Johnson and Hendrick Motorsports teammate Gordon were separated by only seven votes. Stewart trailed Johnson by three votes. Media members were also tasked with predicting the final top 10 for the NASCAR Nationwide Series and NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.<\/p>\n NASCAR reporters feel d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu in NASCAR\u2019s No. 2 series, picking Ricky Stenhouse Jr. to become the first NASCAR Nationwide repeat champion since Martin Truex Jr. accomplished the rare feat in 2004-05.<\/p>\n Stenhouse, who tallied 74 votes, nabbed two more than Sunoco Rookie of the Year contender Austin Dillon and last season\u2019s runner up Elliott Sadler. Filling out the top 10: Justin Allgaier, Sam Hornish Jr., Danica Patrick, Kenny Wallace, Cole Whitt, Trevor Bayne and Michael Annett.<\/p>\n Johnny Sauter came a scant six points short of winning last season\u2019s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship. Instead, Austin Dillon wore the 2011 crown. Dillon\u2019s gone now, moving to the NASCAR Nationwide Series, and NASCARMedia.com prognosticators believe Sauter will take advantage of his absence.<\/p>\n In the closest vote among the three series, Sauter\u2019s 62 votes barely edged Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidate Ty Dillon (Austin\u2019s little brother) for the top spot. The younger Dillon tallied 61 votes from the media.<\/p>\n Rounding out the top 10: Ron Hornaday Jr., Matt Crafton, James Buescheer, Timothy Peters, Parker Kligerman, Joey Coulter, Nelson Piquet Jr., Jason Leffler, Justin Lofton and David Starr.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Five-Time Champion Barely Edges Edwards, Gordon, Stewart DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Feb. 16, 2012) \u2013 Undoubtedly, Jimmie Johnson would like to forget that the 2011 season ever happened. Apparently, voters in NASCARMedia.com\u2019s annual preseason poll already have. Members of NASCARMedia.com picked Johnson to reign supreme once again \u2013 despite a career-low sixth-place finish in the 2011 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[45,21],"tags":[15775],"class_list":["post-9052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nascar","category-sprint-cup","tag-nascar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n\u201cTo be honest I’m stoked they did,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThey know racing and know how much last year will motivate us. Now, we need to go out and do our best to make them all look good.\u201d<\/p>\n