How will team orders play with bubble mates at RIR? (cont'd)

"You saw Mark [Martin] and Jimmie [Johnson] pull over for each other a couple weeks ago to let [Johnson] lead a lap and get five points. Yeah, that stuff happens, but on the other hand, I was running second to Greg [Biffle] at Bristol for a long time -- 30 or 40 laps -- and he never slowed down to let me lead a lap to get my five points, either, because everybody's out there trying to get the best finish for themselves, which they should.

"There's just more emphasis on it and they're gonna talk about it because it's Richmond and it's the last race [before the Chase]. I don't know how many points the leaders have, but it's in the two thousands, so a lot of those two-thousand points there are five points here and 10 points there given to help teammates and friends and stuff like that all year long and I don't think that's really any different this week."

Vickers said fear of "what goes around comes around" would keep potential mayhem to a minimum.

"As far as [Saturday] night, I'm sure teammates are going to do whatever they can to help -- if you're running for a Chase spot and you catch a teammate, you hope to think that he would at least let you go," Vickers said. "Do I expect to see teammates causing harm to competitors over something like that? I don't think so. I'm not going to say that it couldn't happen, but we race with each other too much, too often for stuff like that to go down.

"It just never seems to work out in the long run. I think most of the drivers at this level in the sport know or realize that. There are still 10 races left. If you wreck someone to get into the Chase, you may be in the Chase, but you probably won't win the championship."

Ryan Newman, who's ninth in the standings, just shrugged and said nothing would surprise him.

"Absolutely, there are always teams manipulating things," Newman said. "We saw it a couple of years ago -- we made a lot of talk of [Jack] Roush letting every car lead a lap when they could and things like that when they were dominating, so yeah -- it's part of racing whether it's NASCAR, NHRA or IndyCar."

But for Newman, whose Stewart-Haas Racing team gets cars and engines from Hendrick Motorsports, the subject hasn't been broached.

"I just know in the experience I've had at Hendrick Motorsports, regardless of the situation, it's not been discussed or even considered," Newman said. "I think if we threw something for Mark, I think Mark would get out of the car and whip some ass [because] he wants to go in there and earn it on his own. I don't think he'd tolerate something like that.

"Again, I'm not saying that teams aren't talking about it. I know we're not talking about it. But the other part to it is, and I guess this would weigh on my mind, is that I race against these guys every week. And what comes around goes around. You don't want to control fate like that in a sense and I just don't think I could have that on my conscious, you know, just to throw a race for that to happen. I couldn't."

Newman's teammate and owner, Tony Stewart, a Chase lock as the series point leader, gritted his teeth when asked about giving up a win to let Newman into the Chase.

"It would be awful hard to do [because] I need those 10 bonus points," Stewart said. "The great thing, I don't know that it is going to come down to that. I hope it doesn't. Ryan ran better than we did here in the spring, so I think he will probably settle that on his own. But, man, you just hope it doesn't even come to that. I think when it comes down it, then you make that decision. That's a tough decision to have to make as a driver while you are out there."