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closeAt Chicagoland Today, 8 p.m., TV: TNT
Race for Chase starts to heat up
Attention turns toward the cutoff instead of the leaders; the suspense increases on the bubble as it ebbs near the top.
DAVID POOLE
The Charlotte Observer
Saturday, Jul. 12, 2008
Kyle Busch waits for qualifying Friday, July 11, 2008, for the NASCAR Nationwide Series' Dollar General 300 auto race at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
As the 2008 Sprint Cup season opens its second half with tonight's LifeLock 400 at Chicagoland Speedway, the focus begins to shift away from the top of the points standings.
Kyle Busch, who starts from the pole after qualifying was rained out on Thursday, leads the standings by 182 points over Dale Earnhardt Jr.
More relevant, he's 543 points ahead of 13th-place Kevin Harvick, the kind of margin that allows him to look toward the championship battle looming over the 10-race championship Chase to come at season's end.
“We've been pretty successful this year in winning six races and running up front and leading the points,” Busch said. “That's all great and everything, but the only time that really matters is in the final 10 (races).
“We've got some work cut out for us. Any more wins that come along will obviously be awesome. … We'll take them, especially before the Chase. But solid top fives and top 10s in the last 10 is really what's going to make this championship.”
Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Burton, Carl Edwards and Jimmie Johnson, the rest of the top five, would welcome wins, too, since each would earn 10 Chase bonus points to keep Busch from having such a big head start once the championship battle begins.
But from tonight through the season's 26th race at Richmond, the spotlight will shift more and more each week from who's first to who's 12th or better in the standings and eligible for the Chase.
The teams from sixth, where Jeff Gordon is 106 points clear of the cutoff, back to 16th, where Brian Vickers is 112 points behind 12th, are squarely in NASCAR's “bubble.” Each team in that range is within one race's worth of points from being in or out of the Chase and it's rapidly becoming time where that's relevant.
“It is nerve-wracking,” Clint Bowyer said. “It's crunch time, do or die time. Right now we are in it, but it's up to us to stay in it.”
Bowyer is 10th , just 16 points clear of 13th. That means he has no room for error, a situation that Greg Biffle knows all too well. Biffle was 118 points clear of 13th going into Daytona, but he finished 43rd in the Coke Zero 400 and now he's 10 points up on 13th-place Kevin Harvick.
“Last week was dismal,” Biffle said. “I wish we could go back and rewind the clock, but we can't. We're very disappointed with where we're at. We were second in points (five races into the season) and now we're 11th, on the fringe of being out. But our team is strong enough to make the Chase. That's one positive thing about it, is we're competitive enough, we're running good enough to make it.”
The problem, though, is that the other teams around Biffle's in the standings have strength, too.
Biffle is just behind Bowyer and just in front of Tony Stewart, who's only two points up on Harvick. Just ahead of that trio is Matt Kenseth, who has surged back into Chase contention with seven finishes of seventh or better in the past eight races.
“I feel good about what we've been able to do the last couple of months,” Kenseth said. “But you're not comfortable where you are in the standings, obviously, until you go to Richmond and you're 152 points, or whatever it is, ahead of 13th place, then you're comfortable. I'm comfortable with how we're running, we're a lot more competitive, and we're operating more like a championship team here the last month or two.”
Martin Truex Jr. remains 88 points out of the Chase in 14th pending his team's appeal of a 150-point penalty levied this week. Harvick and Truex both made last year's Chase.
Next come David Ragan and Vickers, whose teams are much improved this year and seem to be on the rise as the season rolls on. Ragan rebounded from a 40th at New Hampshire by winding up fifth last weekend. Vickers has finished 16th or better in each of his past six races – precisely the kind of consistency it will take over the next two months to qualify to battle for a title this season.