Urgency non-issue among Chasers after one race (cont'd)

Jeff Gordon is another driver facing a three-digit deficit after the first Chase race. He realizes that he has significant ground to make up, but knows there's still time. He'll start seventh on Sunday and feels a top-10 finish is almost imperative.

"That's really the bottom line," Gordon said. "Everybody is going to have a 15th or worse finish, I believe, somewhere along the way. It could possibly be worse than that when you get to Talladega and Martinsville -- those places where the unknown is there. Obviously we've got some ground to make up but we're not sitting here going, 'OK, we've got to make it all up right here at Dover.'

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At the end of the day all 10 races give you the same points. It's not like you go to Loudon and they give you 10 points and you come to Dover and they give you 100, or Miami. You've just got to try to run good everywhere.

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-- JUAN MONTOYA

"We're not [in a do-or-die situation]. We're looking at it as nine races. We've got nine races to get our consistency up, our performance up. We've got to lead some laps. When we're in a position to battle for a win we've got to pull off the win."

On the other hand, drivers coming off sterling performances at New Hampshire are downplaying how much of an advantage they've obtained. Martin's win put him 35 points ahead of Johnson and Denny Hamlin, but he knows the competition is conceding nothing at this point, especially with a wild card like Talladega looming in the near future.

"Loudon is 10 percent of the Chase," Martin said. "It's the same 10 percent as any other race in the Chase. I said before we got up there, don't get so excited and calling 'It's going to be this and its going to be that' after one race.

"There's a lot of stuff left to happen and a lot of racing left to happen. I was still trying to do the same thing. Don't get carried away with what the complexion of the Chase is going to be when it comes down to it, based on one race. Everybody in the Chase right now is performing on a level that could pull it off depending on how things work out for them."

Juan Montoya's opinion echoes Martin's. He finished third at Loudon and starts on the front row Sunday. For Montoya, the key is staying consistent.

"At the end of the day all 10 races give you the same points," Montoya said. "It's not like you go to Loudon and they give you 10 points and you come to Dover and they give you 100, or Miami. You've just got to try to run good everywhere and if you don't you try to rescue as many points as you can and move on. It's rough, because some weeks you're hoping to run better and you don't, and some weeks you surprise yourself running really good. It is what it is."

According to Kurt Busch's analysis, it's all about average finish. For Busch, balancing out bad races with good ones is the goal.

"It changes because if you have a couple of [did not finishes], you're going to have to have two to three wins to erase those as far as points go," Busch said. "So when you really think about it, if you win one week and DNF the next week, that averages out to about a 20th-place finish, that's not so good.

"What you need is nice, consistent runs that keep your average finish on the low side towards seven, eight, nine, those are what I look for as far as how you run through these 10 weeks. If you're going to have some bad races, you going to have to have wins to make those go away."

If anyone might be the definitive expert on the subject, it should be Johnson, who has won the last three championships and starts on the pole Sunday. He agrees that consistency is critical -- plus a healthy dose of good fortune.

"For whatever reason, we've been able to adjust to different cars, different tires, split season of vehicles, and find a good baseline set-up to work with and collect points," Johnson said. "You know, I look at Mark [Martin], and he started the season with some mechanical issues. And we really haven't had any mechanical issues.

"So that's a very important part of the season and again I guess it does come back to consistency. Mechanical [issues are] a big part of it and not having the DNF's."