Auugust 31, 2009
By Matthew Pizzolato
Matthew Pizzolato
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With the cutoff for the Chase looming on the horizon, a total of 14 drivers are in position to qualify, with three having already clenched a spot. Tony Stewart, Jimmie Johnson, and Jeff Gordon are safe; while Denny Hamlin, Carl Edwards and Kurt Busch are reasonably sure of making it in baring any major malfunction in the next two weeks.
However, positions 7th through 14th are separated by only 89 points and those drivers have been swapping spots the last several weeks. The two drivers on the outside looking in are Kyle Busch in 13th and Brian Vickers in 14th, with Busch being 34 points behind and Vickers behind by 39 points.
Either of them have a good chance to qualify, but of the two, Busch is the hard charger of late, having won last week at Bristol. He has also won the last two Camping World Truck series races, giving many fans cause to wonder if he has finally returned to his winning ways after a midseason slump.
Busch, however, doesn’t seem worried about the drivers ahead of him.
“You're almost chasing a point total. That point total is 3,160. That's what I heard as a round number this week from a source. If you can total 3160 in points, you'll make it in the Chase,” Busch was quoted as saying in an article on nascar.com.
“I did the math from 3,160, minus what we were, and figured that out, divided it by three, we needed a 147 point average in these next three races, which is sixth [place].”
Of course, a bad race by one of the drivers already in the top twelve certainly wouldn’t help his cause, but he still needs to perform at the top of his game in order to take advantage of another driver’s misfortune.
The drivers from 7th to 12th, Ryan Newman, Greg Biffle, Juan Montonya, Mark Martin, Kasey Kahne, and Matt Kenseth all have targets on their backs as far as Busch and Vickers are concerned.
As NASCAR’s Chase for the Championship enters its sixth season, Tony Stewart has a commanding lead that will soon evaporate when the Chase begins, but that is the point of the new format. Consistency during the regular season is not rewarded, all drivers need to do is run well enough to make the top twelve and they have a shot at winning the title.
Tony Stewart currently enjoys a 220 point advantage over second place and is tied for second in wins; he has more top-5 and top-10 finishes than anyone else, but won’t even be the top seed when the Chase starts, unless he wins the next two races. If Kyle Busch or Mark Martin makes the Chase, they will both be seeded ahead of Stewart because each of them has four wins this season.
So far, the Chase hasn’t been kind to drivers who had a commanding lead going into it. The only driver to finish the regular season with the points lead and emerge from the Chase holding the Championship trophy was Tony Stewart in 2005.
Maybe Stewart knows something about the Chase the rest of the drivers don’t; then again maybe he just got lucky.
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