Non-Chase drivers still have reasons to race hard

You have to be in it to win it.

That's the Chase for the Nextel Cup in a nutshell. We know who's in it, and one of the 12 men will be the next series champion. All 12 celebrated a hard, tough, long 26-race stretch with bottles of champagne at Richmond, spraying it all over 300-plus hardy souls from the Official NASCAR Members Club and each other.

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When all the shouting, celebrating and hat-slinging was done, one question remained: What about the other 31 drivers in each of the next 10 races?

What is their motivation? It can be one of a few things, really. Running well to keep sponsors happy, to hang onto the ride for next year; to build chemistry so that they can challenge for the top 12 in 2008 -- provided that it is still a 12-man field -- those can all be positive motivations.

There's also the flip side of that coin. It could be a 10-race pout, focused not on improvement but on all the reasons why the team is not among those racing for the brass ring. It could be a 10-race joy ride, where driver and team gamble constantly, make crazy (or at least ill-advised) strategy decisions and generally spend Sundays seeking to wind up in Victory Lane or on the trailer. Or it could be simply running out the string and planning for the future.

Or, it could be a combination of all of them on both sides of the motivation game.

So much attention will be focused on the Chasers from here on out that it might take a huge upset to grab any attention whatsoever. Steve Lauletta, president of Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, has said that a team's major obstacle in NASCAR is differentiating itself from the other teams in what is a very crowded sport.

Running well in the Chase is one way to do that, and so is running poorly. Crashing, causing a major wreck or igniting a blood feud are other, less optimal ways of attracting attention.

Regardless of how it all plays out in the next 10 races, you'll see evidence of every one of these in the non-Chasers.

Picking the winner of the Chase is a time-honored tradition among NASCAR writers. Another such tradition is making a pick, seeing your champion wad one up on the third lap of the New Hampshire race and promptly forgetting that you made any sort of prediction whatsoever.

Like professional bull riders and NFL cornerbacks, NASCAR writers (professional bull slingers?) need to have short memories.

If you go on the basis of who is hot and who is not, then you've narrowed it down to three drivers: Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch and Tony Stewart.

If you choose on who is best on the Chase tracks, then you have to consider Johnson, Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards.

If it's consistency you prize, Matt Kenseth is your man. The guy runs ninth every week and by the time you get around to looking at the standings, he's 100 points ahead and not looking back.

Dark horses include Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton, Martin Truex, Jr., Kyle Busch and Clint Bowyer ... yep, that's all. The darkest horse has to be Kyle Busch, because he has the ability, however fleeting, to take over any race he's in. Of course, he also has the ability to go so hard in the middle of a run that he winds up crashed.

The winner of the Chase for 2007 will be ... one of the 12 drivers who sprayed champagne at Richmond. Well, that's sort of wimpish, so I'll go out on a limb and pick...Jeff Gordon.

Of course, that might be different after Lap 3 on Sunday.

The opinions expressed are those solely of the writer