Chase field addresses issue of 'three-man race'

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- At Martinsville Speedway, the statistics don't lie -- either in relation to Sunday's Tums Fast Relief 500 or the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

Four-time defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin, who's second in the championship by 41 points, have won the past eight races here, with Hamlin riding a two-race skein. Kevin Harvick is third in the standings, 77 points behind Johnson.

Four-time champion Jeff Gordon is fourth in the standings and he's a seven-time Martinsville winner -- though his last win at the track came when he swept both Cup events in 2005.

More significantly, Gordon is riding a string of 15 consecutive top-10 finishes at Martinsville -- with only two of them being outside the top five.

Given that statistical jumble, two points are being made by thousands of people in and around the sport: first, that the Chase has become a three-man race and second, that Martinsville could be considered a wild -card race where anything could happen to jumble the standings, a la next weekend at Talladega Superspeedway.

After he won at California, Tony Stewart looked like a bona fide contender when he went to Charlotte a race later and finished an uncompetitive 21st -- immediately becoming an afterthought, 177 points out. Martinsville's no wild card, the two-time champion said.

"I don't think so [because it's] no different than anywhere else we go," Stewart said. "You can get in trouble here, but it's not normally 15-20 cars deep in getting in trouble. If you get in a problem, it's normally because you are a root of it or directly involved in it."

Greg Biffle is another competitor whose championship hopes vaporized after an engine failure at California. Biffle was right in the mix after he won the third race in the Chase at Kansas. Now, 225 points behind Johnson, Biffle took a broader view than Stewart.

"It's frustrating that you work all season and it gets down to you pitted [at Dover] and the caution came out and trapped you, and then it comes down to we had the engine too lean [at California] and we blew up," Biffle said. "Therefore, we're out of the hunt and we've got to wait until next year to make another go at the title. First, we've got to make the Chase and then we've got to perform again [and] that's a lot to think about and a lot to look towards.

"I think [Talladega is the wild card], and here [Martinsville]. You could have your brakes go out. You could burn a gear up. Normally, we don't really see engine issues here. If you get spun out here or you get involved in something, normally you can keep going, so it's not so much of a wild card."

Harvick, who held a 228-point lead over Kyle Busch at the end of the 26-race "regular season" before the Chase, epitomizes what can happen at Martinsville. In the spring, he led 57 laps and "ran well" before a part failure relegated him to a 35th place finish -- his worst of the season in which he gave up 132 points to winner Hamlin.

Still, that only emphasizes Martinsville as being an equalizer, not necessarily a tide-turner.

Hamlin said he's more concerned with Harvick than he is catching Johnson.

"One thing I can tell you is that the difference between me and Jimmie is a lot larger than the difference between me and Harvick," Hamlin said. "[Harvick] could be past me with five positions or something like that in one race.

"This is by no means just between me and Jimmie, I don't feel like. I feel like [Harvick] showed enough consistency through the whole year that I considered him the favorite this whole Chase and we're only five races in and he's still right there. It's not me versus Jimmie, but like that commercial says, 'it's me versus myself.'" (Continued)