Thu, Dec 27, 2007 (7:19 a.m.)

Kevin Harvick won the season-opening Daytona 500 and then was not heard from again, going winless in the next 35 races. Jimmie Johnson won the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March and never slowed down, winning nine more races en route to the 2007 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series championship.

But the biggest stories to come out of NASCAR in 2007 didn't involve pistons, passes or pit stops. Whether it was Dale Earnhardt Jr. leaving the company his father founded to drive for another team or the death of the sport's longtime president and caretaker Bill France Jr., Sun cartoonist Mike Smith was there on a weekly basis to document it all.

Here is a sampling of Smith's take on NASCAR's 2007 season.

archive