November 1, 2011
By Doug Demmons
The Sprint Cup Chase has probably come down to just two drivers.
Martinsville on Sunday culled the field pretty well, leaving Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart to battle it out for the championship.
Kevin Harvick in third and Brad Keselowski in fourth aren’t out of the picture. Harvick is 21 points behind Edwards and Keselowski is 27 back.
Barring calamity in the next three races, Harvick would need to make up seven points on Edwards each weekend. If Harvick’s average finish for the last three races was third, he would need Edwards’ finishes to average outside the top 10. And he would also need bad luck to bite Stewart.
That’s not mathematically out of it. It’s doable. Edwards and Stewart could take each other out at Texas this weekend and it would be anyone’s game again.
But the odds favor an Edwards/Stewart duel.
Keselowski might still be in the hunt if he hadn’t been spun out on the final restart at Martinsville.
But the biggest loser at Martinsville was Matt Kenseth. He went from second in points to fifth, 36 behind Edwards. A flat tire on the No. 17 triggered a wreck that put Kenseth in the garage and left him 31st.
And forget about Five Time. The coup de grace for Jimmie Johnson’s season came on the final restart when he let Tony Stewart drive by him.
“Tony hung on tough on the outside there and I just couldn’t bring myself to lean on him and move him out of the way with where he is in the points,” Johnson said after the race. “I just kind of raced him clean and then he got around on the outside and got in front of us.”
Would anyone else have cut Stewart as much slack with a chance to win at Martinsville?
Not likely. There are probably 10 or 15 drivers who would have wrecked the field rather than let someone pass them for the lead on the outside with two laps to go at Martinsville.
And how about Kyle Busch? The wheels came off of his title hopes at Martinsville -- literally.
The lug nuts on his left front tire were left off on a pit stop, his tire rolled away fast enough to incur a pit road speeding penalty and that was that.
Crew chief Dave Rogers was left to blame fate, the racing gods, the moon not lined up with the stars, whatever.
“In life you have to go through tests and last year we were in the Chase and we had a number of tests come our way and quite frankly, we didn’t handle them that well,” Rogers said. “I think that as a team we’ve handled a lot of tests this year really well, but none in the Chase.
But, he said, “I haven’t seen people bow their heads. I haven’t seen people complaining. I haven’t seen Kyle get frustrated.”
So, the No. 18 team can start looking toward 2012 because, Rogers said, Martinsville “clearly hurts any realistic shot at winning a championship this year. There’s still a chance -- we won’t give up, but realistically we know it’s over. But in the end -- a year from now, two years from now, 10 years from now -- this will make us better people and a better race team and that’s how you go forward.”
Doug Demmons is a writer and editor for the Birmingham News ~ he writes daily and weekly auto racing columns ranging from NASCAR to open wheel to Formula One, local tracks and more... you can read Doug's columns online at Blog of Tommorow
Follow Doug on Twitter: @dougdemmons
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
You can contact Doug Demmons at ....
