Light for Bowyer flickers, but not in dark just yet

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Could've, should've, would've.

For Clint Bowyer and his crew chief Gil Martin, both wished they would've taken four tires instead of two on his sudden green-flag pit stop in Sunday's Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway -- a call the could've saved their shot at the championship.

That's hindsight.

But when you're 181 points behind Chase leader Jimmie Johnson with only two races left in the season, hindsight is now futile for the No. 07 Richard Childress Racing team.

On Lap 247, Bowyer radioed to his crew that he believed his car had a loose right-rear wheel and pitted right away. But, when the No. 07 returned to the track, Bowyer and the team realized it was the left-side wheel coming loose, not the right.

Martin said the left-side tires had been on the car for almost 28 to 29 laps, the right-side tires for only three laps.

"I guess after the restart when we spun the tires, it loosened the left-rear up enough to start vibrating," Martin said. "It came loose. Since we just pitted, we just hoped it was the right-rear. It wasn't so we had to come back. In hindsight, I wish we had taken four [tires]. We didn't. That's all you can do."

Bowyer came back down pit road, lost two laps in the process, and never recovered.

He finished 19th.

"We are down but not out in the Chase," said a frustrated yet still hopeful Bowyer. "There is no give up in this team. We are going to take it a lap at a time, race at a time and keep fighting until the checkered flag falls at Homestead."

Mathematically speaking, Bowyer is not eliminated from championship contention. But in order for the first-time Chase contender to make a comeback, the Hendrick stronghold will have to make major mistakes in the last two races of the season.

Jeff Gordon said, hands down, the championship is his or teammate Johnson's.

"You're pretty much looking at both of us having to have trouble for those guys [on the No. 07 team] to be a factor," Gordon said. "With Jimmie running as good as he's been running, and we're always solid with top-fives and top-10s, it's hard to gain over 100 points on either one of us."

Chase contenders Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart face the same fate. The rest of the Chase field -- seventh on down to 12th position -- have been mathematically eliminated from the championship following Sunday's race because they are more than 390 points behind.

If points were dolled out based on perseverance alone, Matt Kenseth, now 10th in the standings, would've cashed in Sunday after a dramatic battle with Johnson for the lead nearing the final laps of the race.

"I was probably a little too far over my head. If I had to do it over again and I knew I was going to get beat, I probably wouldn't have ran Jimmie quite as hard as I did, because I thought I lost my car once and probably would've taken him with me," said Kenseth, now 454 points behind the leader heading to Phoenix International Raceway.

Kenseth likely knew he was out of Chase contention before Sunday. Nevertheless, the No. 17 Roush Fenway driver was hungry for a win.

"We haven't won in forever," said Kenseth, whose last victory was at California in the season's second race. "So, we were racing hard, trying to keep the win and couldn't do it."

Stewart couldn't keep his car straight either, as he fought an ill-handling racecar after the No. 20 sustained minor damage in a multi-car crash on Lap 220 in Turn 2 caused by Casey Mears (watch video).

"It was a weird race," said Stewart after climbing from his racecar on pit road instead of in Victory Lane like he did this time last season.

Stewart, who brought home an 11th-place finish, is barely hanging on in the sixth position of the Chase, 373 points behind the leader.

"The car was tight. It was loose. Whatever it was doing was unpredictable," Stewart said. "It was doing so many things in so many weird parts of the racetrack that it was a handful."