Breaking down the Chase | How the top-12 drivers fared on race day at Talladega Superspeedway

DAVID POOLE and JIM UTTER

The Charlotte Observer

Sunday, Oct. 07, 2007

Examining the Talladega race day for the 12 contenders in NASCAR's Chase:

1st – Jeff Gordon (5,690 points)

Jeff Gordon’s daughter, Ella, made her debut in victory lane after Sunday’s race. Gordon’s last victory this year had been at Pocono on June 10, just 10 days after his first child’s birth.

“That was cool,” Gordon said. Crew chief Steve Letarte was happy to be back in victory lane, too, but he knew his team had made what could have been a big mistake on a pit stop after a caution on Lap 145. Gordon ran over an air wrench hose, pulling the wrench out of his pit box. Gordon had to come back in as the field came to take the green to serve a pass-through penalty, and might have lost the lead draft had another yellow not come out soon thereafter.

“We can’t have mistakes like that and expect to be lucky in the Chase,” Letarte said. “It just shows that there is always something that can be worked on.”

2nd – Jimmie Johnson (nine points back)

Things went the way Jimmie Johnson and his team had planned right up until the final lap on Sunday. He hung back until near the end of the race, and had the lead coming to the white flag before being passed by Jeff Gordon and finishing second.

“I wasn’t happy with getting passed, but that would have been the situation with anybody,” Johnson said when asked if it bothered him that his Hendrick Motorsports teammate didn’t stay with him in the draft.

“There must have been stuff going on behind me that I couldn’t see that Jeff could in his mirror. That’s great for him.”

Johnson said that while he’s never happy to finish second, considering that his previous finishes in Talladega’s fall races had been 37th, 34th, 37th, 31st and 24th, second also isn’t all that bad.

“I have to think about the big picture,” he said. “When the race started. I would have taken a 15th-place finish at that point.”

3rd – Clint Bowyer (63 points back)

Clint Bowyer was practically the last man standing as Richard Childress Racing and Dale Earnhardt Inc. engines had a rash of trouble all day.

“It wasn’t as strong as it needed to be,” Bowyer said after finishing 11th to stay within shouting distance of the points leaders. “But, hey, it did its job and got me to the end. That’s what we needed to do here.”

Indeed, Sunday’s finish was the first time in four career Cup starts at Talladega that Bowyer has finished better than 35th.

“The bottom line was we needed to get out of here with a good finish or a solid finish, and we did that,” Bowyer said. “It was nerve-wracking there at the end. I just kept patting the old girl and praying.”

4th – Tony Stewart (154 points back)

Tony Stewart led 38 laps, only two fewer than teammate Denny Hamlin, who led the most laps in the race.

But Stewart lost the lead on Lap 175 when he wasn’t able to halt the charge from two lines coming on either side of him, then wound up pushing Jeff Gordon’s car to the lead on the final lap.

Stewart wound up eighth and had no comments after the race.

5th – Kevin Harvick (202 points back)

Kevin Harvick finished 20th, nursing an ailing engine for the final portion of the race, but still completed all 188 laps.

Harvick’s Talladega record is remarkable. In 14 career races here he’s completed all but 21 of 2,644 laps.

“With 50 laps to go, we dropped a cylinder,” crew chief Todd Berrier said. “I could have been a lot worse. It was worse for 23 other guys.”

6th – Carl Edwards (205 points back)

Carl Edwards finished 14th, but thought he was going to do better until the very end.

“We had a great run going there coming down the back straightaway,” Edwards said. “I thought Denny (Hamlin) and myself were working pretty well together, but he snookered me. ...But it was a good effort because we didn’t wreck the car. I did the best that I could there.”

7th – Kurt Busch (215 points back) Kurt Busch got into position late for the best possible finish, lined up with Penske Racing teammate Ryan Newman contending for the win.

But Busch wound up seventh, which is still his best performance so far in the Chase.

“We survived and finished in the top 10,” Busch said. “We didn’t quite lead a lap. It would have been nice to get the five bonus points for that. All in all we consider this a big success.”

8th – Kyle Busch (260 points back)

For the second race in a row, Kyle Busch was the unwitting victim of someone else’s accident.

Last weekend, he got wrecked by Dale Earnhardt Jr. On Sunday, Busch was caught up in an 11-car wreck triggered by Bobby Labonte in Turn 4.

"Nothing of his doing. (Labonte) just came right across the race track. We were the first one that hit him,” Busch said. “It is a shame, not only for us but all the other guys that got involved in the wreck as well.”

Busch said it was hard to remain optimistic about his title chances.

“It is just the realism of what has happened that sets in and you try to realize you are so far back, it is going to take a lot to get back in this deal,” he said.

9th – Denny Hamlin (262 points back)

Denny Hamlin got a piece of 11-car wreck on Lap 145, but his crew was able to repair much of the damage and he still came away with a fourth-place finish.

“It was pretty exciting those last few laps, a lot of pushing and shoving going on there but everyone did a good job of holding their line there at the end,” he said.

“We just got behind there when we got a little bit of damage but, this crew did a good job putting it back together. We were able to march our way to the front there at the end.”

Hamlin was able to make up some ground, picking up three spots in the Chase standings.

10th – Martin Truex Jr. (300 points back)

Martin Truex Jr. is just looking for a little luck.

“The past three weeks we’ve had great cars capable of winning every race and we just can’t seem to find any luck,” he said.

Sunday, Truex had a fast car but his engine blew up after 113 laps. His 42nd-place finish came on the heels of 13th- and 38th-place finishes the previous two weeks.

“We’ll just keep trying to win races from here on out and do the best we can,” Truex said. “We’re way back in points and that’s not looking good. But we can still win a bunch of races.”

11th – Matt Kenseth (318 points back)

Matt Kenseth said there wasn’t a whole lot of racing at Talladega, but in what racing there was he was caught up in an 11-car accident.

“It’s the same as every other plate race,” Kenseth said. “You didn’t really get to see a race because even the leaders rode around for the first half because everybody was afraid of wrecking.

“Out of 188 laps, you probably saw 30 laps of racing. That racing was exciting. It’s three and four-wide with people hitting each other and all the crazy stuff you see in every plate race.”

12th – Jeff Burton (336 points back)

If anything, Jeff Burton hopes his team came away from Sunday’s blown engine and 43rd-place finish with at least some more knowledge about the car of tomorrow.

“I think there were a lot of unknowns turning 8,500 (rpms) all day long, which is something we typically don’t do,” Burton said.

“We learned something today, hopefully. I am extremely disappointed, but I am not disappointed in our effort.”

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