Bowyer, Edwards showing N'wide Series still relevant

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- They're running in front of much smaller crowds and receiving less media exposure these days, with the squeeze from the disappearance of sponsorship dollars magnified because it's even worse than in NASCAR's parent series on the Sprint Cup side.

But you have to give it to these Nationwide Series guys. They're putting on one heck of a show most weeks, and head to next Saturday's season finale in Homestead with a legitimate battle for the championship still intact.

Saturday's caution-filled Hefty Odor Block 200 at Phoenix International Raceway -- despite multiple wrecks and various mishaps that made it seem to drag on unbearably at times -- proved in the end to add to the drama (read more).

In case you haven't noticed, Sprint Cup is not the only series in which driver Carl Edwards is hot in pursuit of a championship. There was a brief moment during the race Saturday, in fact, when Edwards actually held the Nationwide points lead on Clint Bowyer by four points.

It didn't end up that way. With gobs of white tape adorning the smashed-in hood of his No. 2 Chevrolet as if that was all that was holding his championship hopes together, Bowyer relentlessly worked his way back through the field after an earlier wreck and in the end salvaged seemingly all he could (watch video).

Edwards won the race. What else is new?

But Bowyer held his own in the battle, and heads to Homestead in favorable position to win the war. He finished fourth after falling as far as 30th, and holds an advantage of 56 points going into the season finale.

A day earlier, Bowyer had been talking about what he had to do to hold off defending champion Edwards and win his first Nationwide championship. Coming into Saturday's event, Bowyer was nursing a 91-point lead.

"Just want to stay out of trouble," Bowyer said. "All we've got to do is keep doing what we've been doing all season long, keep from beating ourselves, and we'll be fine."

Trouble found

Of course, that would have been too easy for Bowyer. He found trouble in a big way on Lap 80, wrecking on a restart. When the fall-out from the incident was complete, Bowyer had fallen all the way to 30th in the race -- and to second for the moment in the points standings to Edwards, who was running second in the race at the time.

That was the bad news for Bowyer. But he didn't dwell on it.

Instead, knowing that Edwards couldn't improve much on his position, Bowyer went to work on reshaping his with dogged determination. By Lap 105, he was back up to 15th; by Lap 127, he was back in the top 10 in ninth.

Even with Edwards leading the race by then, Bowyer's advantage in the points was back up to a respectable 39. By Lap 160, Bowyer was back up to seventh and his points advantage on Edwards had expanded to 47.

Hefty Odor Block 200

Official Results

Pos.	Driver	Make
1.	Carl Edwards	Ford
2.	Denny Hamlin	Toyota
3.	Kevin Harvick	Chevrolet
4.	Clint Bowyer	Chevrolet
5.	Kyle Busch	Toyota
6.	Landon Cassill	Chevrolet
7.	Jamie McMurray	Ford
8.	Mike Bliss	Chevrolet
9.	Mike Wallace	Toyota
10.	Joey Logano	Toyota

• Results | Videos | Photos

He and crew chief Dan Dearinghoff made the difficult decision -- some thought it an unwise gamble -- to pit during the final caution period to take on two fresh tires. That cost him two positions on the track, dropping him from fifth to seventh, but in the end it enabled him to gain one spot to fourth overall when the top four cars, including Edwards, attempted to finish the race on old tires.

That produced for Bowyer an extra five points that might come in handy when the final tally is counted at the end of the season.

"I can't handle this anymore," Bowyer said. "I thought we were done. That's what championship teams are made of, though -- being able to bounce back from something like that. We're still in it. But we dodged a bullet."

If he could, Bowyer would call it a season now and not even go to Homestead to run the final Nationwide race.

"It's been a long year. Everybody sort of wants to do something different," Bowyer admitted. "I know I'm chomping at the bit to put a close on this year."

Of course, Edwards feels differently. He needs every bit of the final two races on the Cup side to try to catch two-time defending champion and Phoenix polesitter Jimmie Johnson, and obviously needs every lap of next Saturday's Nationwide event at Homestead to attempt running down Bowyer.

"Every point counts. We needed to win this race and we needed to lead the most laps. If we go to Homestead and do that again, we can make up 56 points if Clint has just a little bit of an off day," Edwards said.

What's up for the future?

The excitement of this year's Nationwide finish masks bigger problems with the series. With crowds down and sponsorship dollars shrinking even more rapidly and severely than on the Cup side, what is the future of NASCAR's No. 2 series?

Bowyer and Edwards think it's solid. Or at least they hope it is.

But they differ on how it might look in coming years, as Bowyer said he believes full-time Cup drivers will continue to lend their faces to it on a regular basis and Edwards said he's not so sure about that.

"I think you'll still have the Cup guys coming down and running it," Bowyer said. "I like the challenge of moving over and running the Nationwide Series and the Cup Series. It's a lot of fun to be able to do that. We're looking for sponsorship to run races next year, so we're trying to be a part of it, trying to make sure we stay in the Nationwide Series.

"I enjoy this series. I think it's very competitive. I think the cars are a lot of fun to drive, and I think they put on a good race."

Edwards agrees on most of the points stressed by Bowyer, but wonders how long Cup drivers will continue to drive in Nationwide events as much as they have been.

"I don't expect to see as many Cup guys full-time next year," Edwards said. "But it's hard to keep these guys out of racecars, so I think there will be a lot of teams putting together multiple driver programs kind of modeling it after what the [Joe] Gibbs [Racing] guys have done [where Cup drivers share rides throughout the season]. I think that works out pretty well for sponsors and it gives the drivers races to race that they enjoy racing.

"I don't know. You never know until it kind of all gets put together here in the next month or two. Hopefully, the series can survive and the sponsorship doesn't take too much of a toll on it."

The racing is good entertainment. It's the rest of the equation that remains a mystery.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer