In something of a surprise, NASCAR has picked Stephen Leicht over Josh Wise as its 2012 Sprint Cup Rookie of the Year. But how did they pick between these abysmal performances: Wise was 39th in points, had no poles, no wins, no top-fives, no top-10s and only one running finish in 30 starts. Leicht was 41st in points with no poles, no wins, no top-fives, no top-10s and five running finishes in 15 starts.

Several shake ups in the garage

Sunday marked the end of several driver/team relationships, some of which had been part of NASCAR for years. Matt Kenseth is moving from Roush Fenway Racing to Joe Gibbs Racing; Joey Logano is moving from Roush Fenway to Penske Racing; Sam Hornish Jr. is moving from Cup and Nationwide at Penske to a full Nationwide schedule; Regan Smith is going from a part-time and fill-in Cup driver to a full-schedule Nationwide driver for JR Motorsports; Trevor Bayne is moving from a limited-schedule Cup driver to full-time in the Nationwide Series at Roush Fenway and two-time Nationwide champion Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is going from full-time Nationwide to full-time Cup at Roush Fenway.

A little info on the new champ

Only Jeff Gordon won his first NASCAR title in fewer starts than Brad Keselowski did on Sunday night. Gordon won the first of his four Sprint Cups in 1995, at the end of this third season, after just 93 starts. Keselowski won his first title after 125 career starts;

-Keselowski is only the second driver to win both the NASCAR Nationwide and Sprint Cup championships. Bobby Labonte won in Nationwide in 1991 and in Cup in 2000; Keselowski won in Nationwide in 2010 and Cup this year;

-As of Sunday night, four Dodge drivers have won Sprint Cups: David Pearson in 1966, Bobby Isaac in 1970, Richard Petty in 1974 and 1975, and now Keselowski. Thirty-five NASCAR drivers have won in Dodges, from Isaac and Petty (37 wins each) to 14 drivers, each with one win. Among those one-win drivers: A.J. Foyt, Juan Pablo Montoya, Junior Johnson and Rusty Wallace.

-Keselowski gave team owner Roger Penske his first Sprint Cup, but The Captain has been a contender throughout much of his stock car career. Penske has now fielded 20 teams that finished top-10 in points: Rusty Wallace (12 times), Ryan Newman (three times), Keselowski and Kurt Busch (twice each) and Bobby Allison (once). Before Sunday night, Wallace's second-place in 1993 was Penske Racing's best Cup finish.

More notes

Jeff Gordon's win Sunday night was his second this year (after Pocono in August), the 87th of his career and his first at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Other than Kentucky Speedway, the four-time champion has won at least one Cup race at every NASCAR venue.

-Hendrick Motorsports now has won 209 Cup races, most in the modern-era and second all-time to Petty Enterprises. Its first win came with Geoffrey Bodine at Martinsville in April of 1984, but it had never won at H-MS until this weekend.

-Jimmie Johnson is well-known for winning five consecutive Cup championships (2006-2010), but he's always been a contender, even in the years he didn't win it. He was fifth, second, second and five in his first four full NASCAR seasons, won five straight, and was sixth and third the past two years, when Tony Stewart and Keselowski won the Cups.

-Few drivers have fallen as far from one season to the next as Carl Edwards. Last year, in Roush Fenway Fords, he and Stewart finished the 36-race season tied in points. Stewart won the Cup based on the “most wins tiebreaker.” This year, not only did Edwards miss the Chase for the Championship, he won only one pole, no races, had only three top-five finishes and 13 top-10s, and earned only six lap-leader bonus points. He finished the season 15th in points, the worst showing of his career.

-It's small consolation – or maybe no consolation at all – but Kyle Busch finished the season 13th in points, the highest he could finish after missing the 12-driver Chase field. Ironically, Busch had a very strong final 10 races, finishing eight of them in the top-10 and leading in six. His only poor finishes were 28th at Loudon and 31st at Kansas.

-Kurt Busch helped make Furniture Row Racing make history on Sunday night. He finished ninth, his third consecutive top-10 finish after joining the single-car, modest-budget Chevrolet team at Charlotte in October. Before he came along the organization had never recorded even two consecutive top-10 finishes.

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