Is there a Vitaly Petrov
             Waiting to decide the Sprint Cup Championship?

November 18, 2010

By Doug Demmons

Doug Demmons

Before the season-ending Formula One race in Abu Dhabi, Sebastian Vettel appeared to be a longshot to win the championship.

Vettel started on the pole but he was in third place in the standings. To win the title, he needed a lot of cards to fall his way.

And fall they did. In fact, the ace of spades for Vettel was a Russian driver, Vitaly Petrov.

Points leader Fernando Alonso found himself stuck behind Petrov late in the race, way back in eighth place with Vettel up front on cruise control toward the win.

Lap after lap Petrov held off Alonso, refusing to give up the position. Alonso never did get around Petrov and it cost him the title. In F1 you can’t just go up and knock somebody out of the way who is holding you up the way you can in NASCAR.

But Petrov thought about letting Alonso go.

"It went through my mind to let Alonso pass me,” he told the Russian sports daily Super Express. "But I remembered 2008 when Vettel almost took the championship from (Lewis) Hamilton by not letting him go."

Alonso was steamed at Petrov on the slow-down lap at the end of the race and told reporters he thought the rookie had been too aggressive.

Apparently Alonso figured Petrov wasn’t supposed to race him as hard as he could.

Good thing it doesn’t work that way in NASCAR. Or would it?

Is it possible that the Sprint Cup championship could be decided by a driver who cuts Denny Hamlin or Jimmie Johnson or Kevin Harvick a break and lets him go by without a fight?

Or will it be decided by a driver who races them especially hard? Is there a Vitaly Petrov lurking in the 43-car field?

With Hamlin just 15 points ahead of Johnson and 46 ahead of Harvick, even little things make a huge difference. If the gas can that got stuck in the back of Kasey Kahne’s No. 83 as he left the pits at Phoenix had fallen off on the track and brought out a caution, Hamlin might have a comfortable lead going into Homestead.

If the lug nut that forced Harvick to come back down pit road late in the race had been secured properly, Harvick might not have had enough fuel to make it to the end.

So, could a teammate of a contender be the difference?

“I certainly think so,” said Gil Martin, Harvick’s crew chief. “I think it's going to be a big factor.

“I don't think anybody is going to go out and intentionally wreck anybody, but I don't think anybody is going to particularly do anybody any favors on the race track when it comes down to just pure racing as far as moving over and letting a guy go,” he said. “I think they're going to try to impede their process as much as they can on the race track.”

It could work the other way too.

At Phoenix, Kyle Busch was up front for a while racing Hamlin for the win. Would he have done that on the last lap? You bet.

It could also play out that a teammate does something off the track or in the garage -- like the pit crew swaps that Johnson and Harvick benefited from -- that affects the outcome.

“You never know how things play out on the track,” Martin said. “There's a lot of favors that go on throughout the garage, whether it's engine programs, tires, whatever happens. So I don't think you'll see anybody intentionally wrecking, but I don't think that you'll see a lot of favors being done. Or maybe there will be some favors that will be paid back at the end of this race, too.”

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

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