Richmond an entertaining precursor of Chase to come (cont'd)

Stewart desperately wanted to spoil Johnson's party and capture the first victory of a season. He ended up having to settle for his ninth top-five finish, including his third second in his past five starts.

"We got down there and we couldn't get by," Stewart said. "We were able to get a run and couldn't get under him. It was a great race. I think it was probably one of the greatest runs I've ever had here at Richmond, battling Jimmie over those last 15 laps.

Standings

Tiebreaker is best finishes beyond race victories

Pos.	Driver	Points
1.	Kyle Busch	5,080
2.	Carl Edwards	5,050
3.	Jimmie Johnson	5,040
4.	Dale Earnhardt Jr.	5,010
5.	Clint Bowyer	5,010
6.	Denny Hamlin	5,010
7.	Jeff Burton	5,010
8.	Tony Stewart	5,000
9.	Greg Biffle	5,000
10.	Jeff Gordon	5,000
11.	Kevin Harvick	5,000
12.	Matt Kenseth	5,000

• Store: New Chase arrivals

"We did everything we could. We raced him the way he would have raced us. I wanted to race him with respect, the way he would me. We just came up short."

There was some question about whether or not Earnhardt raced Busch with respect, or if he simply raced him the way he figured Busch raced him last time at Richmond.

"I'm real happy about the way we ran [Sunday]. It gives us a boost going in [to the Chase]," said Earnhardt, who finished fourth behind Johnson, Stewart and third-place finisher Denny Hamlin to seal up the fourth seed for the Chase. Earnhardt will open the Chase next Sunday in New Hampshire 70 points behind top seed Busch, 40 behind second seed Carl Edwards and 30 behind third seed Johnson.

Earnhardt denied that he deliberately took Busch out to take the lead on Lap 213. In fact, he hinted that he thought the incident may have cost him any real chance he had of winning the race (watch video).

"I think if I wreck somebody, I ain't gonna leave him in good enough shape to come back and get me back in the same race. So that wasn't my intention," Earnhardt said. "I tried to stop left front. We slid for 15 or 20 yards. The car was vibrating and vibrated pretty much the whole rest of that run. We sort of faded from there."

Asked later if he thought Earnhardt's tap was payback for turning him earlier at Richmond, Busch shrugged.

"Was that revenge? Who knows?" Busch said.

So what's next?

The bottom line? Sunday's event served as hard evidence that this should be one great Chase, indeed.

Johnson appears to be getting hot at just the right time, and many consider him the heavy favorite. But Busch opens the Chase atop the standings thanks to the 80 bonus points he earned for his Sprint Cup series-high eight race victories, and at times recently Carl Edwards, with six race wins, has looked like the man to beat.

Plus, there are sub-plots already swirling. Edwards and Busch tangled recently at Bristol, and now Earnhardt and Busch have rubbed each other the wrong way again.

What happened Sunday, with the strong runs from the likes of Stewart, Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon, served as a reminder that anyone in the Chase could be a threat if they get off to a great start, stay consistent, and most of all stay away from serious trouble throughout the next 10 weeks.

If Sunday was a preview of what is to come, it was worth waiting the extra 18 hours to see what was going to happen.

"I had a blast all day long," Johnson said. "There was a lot of hard racing for every position. At the end, that's how you want to win a race. You want to win a race going against the best in the business."

You want to win a championship the same way. And after Sunday at Richmond, it's clear that there is likely to be more to this Chase to the championship than presently meets the naked eye.

The best in the business are hard at work, and that includes more than simply the top three qualifiers to the Chase. It should be entertaining to see what happens next.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.