Richmond an entertaining precursor of Chase to come

RICHMOND, Va. -- On the surface it may seem that Sunday's victory by Jimmie Johnson in the Chevy Rock & Roll 400 served merely as yet another red flag that this year's Chase for the Sprint Cup will be a three-man cage match between Johnson, Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards.

But there was so much more to Sunday's event at Richmond International Raceway, which was run about 18 hours later than originally scheduled because of weather concerns related to Tropical Storm Hanna. Remnants of the storm swept through the area Friday evening, but left so quickly it was a bit surprising -- much the same way Johnson swept to the front of the field and left RIR with his fourth win of the season late Sunday afternoon.

This was a race dominated by many sub-plots earlier, none that seemed to involve Johnson.

There was the race for the 12th and final spot in the Chase, which involved a spirited tussle between Clint Bowyer and David Ragan before Bowyer pulled in front for good and Ragan started playing pinball with other cars. There was what appeared to be a little RIR payback delivered by Dale Earnhardt Jr., whose car was the class of the field for a while, on Kyle Busch -- who had spun Earnhardt out when he was leading a race at the same track earlier this season.

But in the end, it was left to the relentless Johnson to duel it out over the final laps with Tony Stewart (watch video). Amazingly, Stewart has yet to win a race this season -- and he enters the Chase in a strange position indeed as a lame-duck driver for Joe Gibbs Racing. At the end of the season, Stewart will be leaving JGR to be owner-driver for the newly formed Stewart-Haas Racing -- which ironically will receive technical and intellectual assistance from Johnson's No. 48 team and the rest of the gang at Hendrick Motorsports.

"Obviously, we had a great car. That's something we haven't had enough of this year," Stewart said of his run.

Respect or no respect?

Stewart's No. 20 Toyota just wasn't quite good enough to catch Johnson. But then no one has been able to catch him much recently. Sunday's win was Johnson's second in a row -- matching what he pulled off heading into last year's Chase, when he went on to capture his second consecutive championship.

Now he's aiming to become only the second driver in the history of the sport to win three titles in a row. Johnson had just celebrated the first birthday of his life when Cale Yarborough won the first of his three consecutive championships in 1976, and planned all along to use Sunday as a springboard into launching his pursuit of a rare piece of stock-car racing history.

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

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"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.