Posted on by Holly Cain

And if numbers mean anything, it will be tough for either co-leader to gain an edge

RELATED: Full coverage from Texas |  Chase page: More on closest race

FORT WORTH, Texas — The closest Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup in history with three races remaining would not appear to be any less dramatic when the checkered flag falls in Sunday’s AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.

That is if you’re a big believer in statistics and history.

Sprint Cup Series championship co-leaders Matt Kenseth and Jimmie Johnson carry similar statistics into the race and their two closest challengers Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick boast heady numbers as well at the challenging 1.5-mile high-banked Texas oval.

Kenseth and Johnson both have a pair of wins and their average finish here is 8.5 and 9.1, respectively. Kenseth has five top-five finishes in the last six Texas races and Johnson has three top-six finishes in that time.

Kenseth finished 12th in the April 500-miler while Johnson is the defending winner of the fall race.

"It’s definitely a tense period of time," Johnson said, "Actually it’s a lot of fun once I can really slow things down and pay attention to it. Having another to race so hard for it and fight for each and every point as we have is, in most situations, a lot of fun.

"It’s not over yet. There is still a lot to go. It’s going to be this way to the end."

Not only are the front-runners bunched up in the point standings, but they also will be cozy on Sunday’s starting grid.

Johnson’s No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet rolls off third, Kenseth’s No. 20 Home Depot Toyota starts sixth.

Gordon, who is third in points — 27 points behind — will start his No. 24 Drive to End Hunger Chevy eighth. Harvick — who trails the leaders by 28 points and is the only one of the top four ranked drivers without a win here, will start his No. 29 Budweiser Chevy 19th.

While statistics can certainly be used by teams to fine-tune future performance, they don’t serve as a can’t-miss determination in the Chase as far as Johnson is concerned. And certainly they haven’t in this year’s championship run.

Historically, for example, Kenseth hasn’t fared well at the Martinsville, Va., half-miler, but he finished second there last week — a little too close for comfort for eight-time Martinsville winner Johnson, who crossed the finish line sixth.

All bets are off in the Chase where the contenders have repeatedly raised their game.

"You can’t look at past history and say that you can count on a 15th-place average at Martinsville for Matt," Johnson explained. "I think the championship battle brings the very best out of people and he and his people are bringing their best each and every weekend.

"I feel in order to win the championship you have to be up front racing for the win. I expect to see the No. 20 there each and every week."

Gordon is of a similar mindset. He says he doesn’t believe in statistics for the long-haul, but thinks most recent results are better predictors, particularly considering the introduction of the new track-record making Gen-6 car this season.

 "I base everything off what the team has done in the previous race not previous races. Tires change, cars change and certainly this year a lot has changed. I base it off what I saw in the test.

"Jimmie was strong testing and strong today (in qualifying) so you expect him to be fast and his is and the 20 (Kenseth) is, too. We actually closed the gap on them so I’m happy with that (qualifying).

"As long as statistically you are in, it’s a five- and six-man race. But we have to make up some gap to realistically be in that fight. A lot will clear up when this race is over. Or maybe not."

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No. 18 finishes 13th after speeding on pit road

RELATED: Full race results | Updated standings | Chase coverage

FORT WORTH, Texas — Another championship contender bites the dust — or does he?

Kyle Busch‘s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship hopes took a major hit with a 13th-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway, seeing the Joe Gibbs Racing driver move up a spot in the standings to fourth, but his points deficit to leader Jimmie Johnson increasing from 36 to 52. If Jeff Gordon‘s surprise challenge to the points leaders after last week’s victory at Martinsville is any indicator, the story of Busch’s 2013 Chase could still have chapters left to be written.

For a good portion of the race it looked as if Busch, who declined post-race comment, was going to come back from an early run-in with the wall to salvage a top-five, possibly a top-three, finish. A late pit road penalty for speeding relegated the driver of the No. 18 Toyota to a disappointing result with his toughest competition (Johnson and Matt Kenseth) each placing in the top five.

"Kyle feels terrible today because he sped on pit road late in the race — but this is a team, and we got his back," said crew chief Dave Rogers. "(The early wreck wasn’t too bad), but it was bad enough where it could’ve ruined our day. He gave us all he had to give us the best finish possible and we took a little bit more than what was there. Like I told Kyle after the race, on a team, everybody is giving 100 percent. And when everybody is giving 100 percent, sometimes they give 100.1, and that point one gets you in trouble."

Unfortunately, it may take Busch giving a constant 100.1 percent at the final two races to overcome the hole he dug at Texas. While his numbers at Phoenix are among the best in the series — a win and 10 top 10s in 17 starts — his Homestead numbers aren’t as glistening. In six of eight starts at the Miami track he’s finished 19th or worse. That said, in last season’s finale he placed fourth after leading 191 of 267 laps.

Still, it might take a little bit of luck on his part — and more than a little bad luck for the 48 and 20 cars — to make up some of the ground lost.

"Realistically at this point, with two races left, you’re probably not going to out-race the 48 and the 20 to accumulate more points than them to win the championship. But anything can happen," said Rogers. "They can speed on pit road. They can have a failure. They can have a wreck. So we’re going to give the next two races 100 percent and if them guys stumble a little bit hopefully we can capitalize."

"Over the years, I’ve learned from experience as soon as you hope for bad luck for someone else, you’re on the hook. You never hope for bad luck for a competitor; you want to beat them on the race track."

Even if Busch is unable to catch the power duo at the top, there’s still a silver lining to 2013 for the 18 team. Third place may be the consolation prize right now, but it’d be Busch’s highest finish ever — just a year removed from missing the Chase completely. Considering the five-time champion Johnson didn’t rein in title No. 1 until age 30, the 28-year-old Busch still has plenty to rest his laurels on if his first doesn’t come this year.

"I don’t really ever count someone out if there’s any kind of outside chance," said team owner Joe Gibbs. "They could get in third still which is a big deal. Then you look at what could happen."

Despite a rough end to what could have been a solid day, nothing changes for how Busch and his crew will approach Phoenix and Homestead.

"It’s the same as what we said in the beginning of the Chase. We’re going to run as hard as we can for 10 races and at the end we’re going to see where the points put us and hopefully it’s good enough to be first."

 

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Posted on by Staff Report

Moments that changed the course of the eighth race in the 2013 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup

JOHNSON DOMINATES TO WIN, TAKE POINTS LEAD
Able to pull away from his pursuers with apparent ease, Jimmie Johnson finished three positions ahead of Matt Kenseth in Sunday’s AAA Texas 500, breaking a tie for the lead in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, but — make no mistake — Johnson’s performance amounted to a brutal bludgeoning of Kenseth and the rest of the opposition.

Similarly, Johnson left Texas last year with a seven-point lead over Brad Keselowski—and lost the title. But the emphatic nature of Johnson’s win on Sunday sent an unmistakable message.

“We came here and tested and did an awesome job of understanding what I needed in the car and what was going to create speed,” Johnson said after the race. “We came back and had a very smooth qualifying session and practice sessions (Saturday), and just kept putting more and more speed in the car.

“It paid off today. Obviously, we need a lot of speed in the car and a win to get any points because Matt is there in the top five. Nice to gain just a few points on him. But just a dominant day for this Lowe’s team.”

Despite the emphatic whipping he administered to the rest of the field, Johnson is anything but overconfident.

"I’ve been watching a lot of MMA fighting lately, and you’ll fall into a rhythm and think that somebody has got the fight won, and it doesn’t end that way,” he said. “That’s how this is going to be. Matt didn’t have maybe the best day and still finished fourth. This thing is going to go to the last lap at Homestead, and it is going to come down to mistakes.

“I’m very excited about our performance and what we did here. We’ll enjoy this, but there is still two weeks of very hard racing ahead of us."

UPS


KENSETH SPEEDS ON PIT ROAD, LOSES POINTS LEAD
Kenseth hurt his own cause with a pit-road speeding penalty, but not even a perfect day on pit road likely would have overcome the dominance of the five-time champion, who led 255 of 334 laps en route to his third victory at Texas Motor Speedway, his sixth of the season and the 66th of his career.

With two races left in the Chase, Johnson heads to next Sunday’s event at Phoenix with a seven-point lead over Kenseth, who rallied from the speeding penalty he incurred on Lap 173 to finish fourth.

GORDON’S BLOWN TIRE COSTLY TO TITLE SHOT
Devastated. That’s how Jeff Gordon described his emotions as he watched his team work furiously to repair his No. 24 Drive to End Hunger Chevrolet in the Texas Motor Speedway garage only 74 laps into the 334-lap event Sunday.

Gordon, who came into the race ranked third in the Sprint Cup Seres standings — 27 points behind co-leaders Matt Kenseth and Jimmie Johnson, blew a left front tire and crashed hard into the Turn 1 wall badly damaging the entire right side side of his car. The setback may be enough to eliminate him from title contention unless frontrunners Kenseth and Johnson have similar misfortune.

"Just had a left front tire go down, not really sure why yet, trying to figure that out, but that’s a shame," Gordon said from his garage as the crew worked behind him to at least the make the car drivable enough to collect what championship points he can.

"I don’t know if I ran over something or we just had a failure. I felt it go down and even had time to go on the radio and say, ‘Oh you-know-what’ because I knew I was getting ready to hit the wall hard."

"It’s a shame. This team has worked so hard to get ourselves in this position and we can’t have things like this happen. This is going to hurt."

NASCAR.com’s Holly Cain and the NASCAR Wire Service contributed to this report.

Posted on by Zack Albert

See how the 2013 Chase stacks up against other championship battles since 1975

RELATED: Full Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup coverage

For all the ground covered and for all the chances for title hopes to be dashed, one would think stock-car racing’s playoffs might be a runaway. Instead, it’s a seven-point lead for five-time champion Jimmie Johnson and 2003 champ Matt Kenseth all even, making it the second-closest Chase in history with two races left.

Johnson and Kenseth enter Phoenix International Raceway for Sunday’s AdvoCare 500 (3 p.m. ET, ESPN) as the series’ winningest drivers this year — Kenseth with seven victories in 2013, and Johnson with six, meaning that Kenseth would hold the tiebreaker if the season were to end in a deadlock.

Such a finish wouldn’t be unprecedented: Tony Stewart edged Carl Edwards for the 2011 Sprint Cup crown on a tiebreaker as he won the Homestead-Miami Speedway season finale.
 
Two rounds to the finish, with two evenly matched heavyweights on their "A game," making the turn for home atop the standings. A look inside NASCAR’s closest season finishes:

With two races remaining
Year Points margin Leader Second place Eventual champion
2011 3 Carl Edwards Tony Stewart Stewart
2013 7 Jimmie Johnson Matt Kenseth ??
2012 7 Jimmie Johnson Brad Keselowski Keselowski
1979 8* Richard Petty Darrell Waltrip Petty
2006 17 Jimmie Johnson Matt Kenseth Johnson
With one race remaining
Year Points margin Leader Second place Eventual champion
1979 2* Darrell Waltrip Richard Petty Petty
2011 3 Carl Edwards Tony Stewart Stewart
1990 6* Dale Earnhardt Mark Martin Earnhardt
2010 15 Denny Hamlin Jimmie Johnson Johnson
2004 18 Kurt Busch Jimmie Johnson Busch

*pre-Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup

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Check out full coverage from this weekend’s races

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AAA Texas 500, Texas Motor Speedway, 3 p.m. ET, Sunday, ESPN (ESPN on air at 2 p.m. ET) | RESULTS

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Jimmie Johnson did his best to separate himself from Matt Kenseth in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings. With his AAA Texas 500 victory, he put seven points between the two, while several other drivers were knocked out of contention. | Read the full story

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Follow live: Lap-by-lap reports from Texas

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Six series win of the year for Keselowski; Hornish Jr. closes gap on Dillon

RELATED: Full race results | Updated standings

FORT WORTH, Tex. — Brad Keselowski dominated early and retook the lead late to win Saturday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Challenge at Texas Motor Speedway.
 
Keselowski led 106 of 200 laps in the 31st NASCAR Nationwide Series race of the season, propelling his No. 22 Penske Racing Ford to a decisive advantage in the owners’ standings.
 
Passing runner-up Denny Hamlin with 14 laps left, Keselowski pulled away to win by .980 seconds. The victory was Keselowski’s sixth of the season, his first at Texas and the 26th of his career. Four different drivers have combined to win 12 times in the No. 22 Ford this season.
 
Penske teammate Sam Hornish Jr. recovered from a commitment violation (hitting the commitment cone on Lap 53) to finish third. Hornish trimmed two points off series leader and fifth-place finisher Austin Dillon‘s advantage and trails by six points with two races left in the season.

Matt Kenseth came home fourth, but Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch blew a right rear tire and crashed off Turn 4 on Lap 110. Busch finished 26th and saw the four-point advantage of his No. 54 Toyota entering the race turned to a 26-point deficit to the No. 22 in the battle for the owners’ championship.
 
Keselowski will drive the car next week, and Joey Logano in the NASCAR Nationwide season finale at Homestead. To Keselowski, the 2010 NASCAR Nationwide driver champion, securing the owners’ title for team owner Roger Penske is a piece of unfinished business.
 
The victory also was redemption of sorts for Keselowski’s last NASCAR Nationwide start, at Kansas, where he wrecked off Busch’s front bumper during intense racing between the two drivers.
 
"I dug us a hole there at Kansas, obviously, with getting tangled up there, and we lost some points," Keselowski said. "So it’s great to recover from that hole and grow a little bit of a lead, but two races is a long ways left, and (26) points is better than nothing, but it’s certainly not a guarantee of anything as well …
 
"But it’s about Roger. It’s about getting him something he hasn’t done, and I take a lot of pride in that."
 
Hamlin grabbed the lead during a cycle of green-flag pit stops before the third caution of the afternoon, caused by Joe Nemechek‘s spin off Turn 2 after a tap from Trevor Bayne, slowed the race on Lap 171.
 
In tight racing after the subsequent Lap 177 restart, Hamlin held off Keselowski for the top spot, but one lap later, Travis Pastrana spun at the exit of Turn 2 and nosed into the inside backstretch wall, necessitating the fourth yellow flag.
 
Keselowski and Hamlin battled side-by-side for three laps before Keselowski ducked to the inside of the No. 20 Toyota and completed the decisive pass.
 
Hornish lost a lap serving a drive-through penalty for the commitment violation, but astute strategy put him in position to take a wave-around under caution for a restart on Lap 76. The caution for Busch’s accident on Lap 110 allowed Hornish to pit without losing a lap, and subsequently he charged to his third-place finishing spot.
 
"It’s one of those things," Hornish said of the early mishap. "You wear the tires here, and the track doesn’t have a whole lot of grip. Pit road comes up pretty quick, and I got a little locked up as soon as I got on the brakes and did everything I could do to try to get it (slowed down) and had a choice of hitting the cone or the back of the 54 car. I figured the cone would hurt the front of my car a lot less.
 
"It was a great recovery by everyone that works on the Wurth Ford Mustang, and we did what we needed to do today. We got ourselves back up there in position to run for the win and over-tightened the car by the time we got to that point. Hats off to everyone at Penske Racing, and it is good to see our teammate go to Victory Lane."

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Posted on by Holly Cain

Pit crew will be the difference, 2012 champion says

RELATED: Full Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup coverage

FORT WORTH, Texas — Shortly after celebrating his sixth NASCAR Nationwide Series victory of the season, reigning Sprint Cup champ Brad Keselowski gave his take on the Sprint Cup title run and predicted that Matt Kenseth would be holding the season trophy three weeks from now in Homestead, Fla.

"I would say Matt because he has the strongest pit crew on pit road," Keselowski said when pressed to make his title pick. "We have seen that track position is attained on pit road and is critical and that will probably win him the Chase. That is my gut."

Of course, Keselowski would rather be in that mix himself, but has missed the 13-driver Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup field for the first time in three seasons. 

However, he is still making his presence known. Three weeks ago at Charlotte he became the first non-Chase driver to win a Chase race this year. And he is definitely watching the title fight between championship co-leaders Kenseth and five-time champ Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick with vested interest. He just doesn’t see it as much of a title fight in the traditional sense of heated rivalry and hard feelings.

Kenseth and Johnson, for example, shared a golf cart at Texas and have repeatedly talked about their respect for one another and off-track friendship.

"In today’s sport you can’t feud," Keselowski said. "There are two different perspectives and it comes back to who is paying the bills. In this sport right now the business model is sponsors. With that business model you would be a fool to alienate half of the fan base over a rivalry because half the fan base pays your bills and pays your sponsors bills so indirectly they pay your bills.

"You can’t really have a rivalry with a popular driver because what happens is their fans nag on your fans and vice versa and get on social media and tell the sponsors how you are a big (jerk) and they won’t buy the product and then you don’t have a sponsor."

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Posted on by Holly Cain

At fifth in the standings, Joe Gibbs Racing driver focused on wins

RELATED: Full Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup coverage

FORT WORTH, Texas — It’s a phenomenon Kyle Busch can’t understand and is well on his way to reversing.

Only five-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson has more wins (32-24) than Busch since 2008. With every passing season, a large contingent of Busch’s competitors, media pundits and even the loud and begrudging boo-birds in the grandstands predict the 28-year-old is a sure bet to become Cup champion.

But despite piling up the trophies, Busch has never gone to Victory Lane during his seven appearances in the 10-race Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. In fact, for all the high hopes and lofty expectations, he has historically finished the season worse when he is contending for a title than when he misses the Chase field altogether.

His only win at a Chase race came at Phoenix in 2005, when he finished the season 20th in the championship standings.

"Last year we ran really well in the Chase and weren’t a Chase car," Busch said. "That was frustrating. We knew we could do it — we proved to ourselves we could do it and we came out here this year and were able to follow-up on last year’s success.

"Barring Kansas (34th-place finish) I think we’ve done a really nice job and … there wasn’t a big one at Talladega that got the championship contenders, but that’s where you try to make up ground when you can. We’ve run a lot better this year than in years past that’s for certain. But apparently there’s still a lot more room for improvement."

Busch has qualified for the Chase in six of the past eight years. His best championship finish is fifth in 2007 when he won one race (at Bristol Motor Speedway). The next year, he finished last in the 12-driver field despite winning eight races prior to the Chase start.

Last year, he failed to make the Chase, but his 9.0 average finish in the 10 Chase races was second only to champion Brad Keselowski.

This year, Busch has led laps in six of the seven Chase races and has five top-five finishes — two of those runner-ups. The only race in which he didn’t lead was New Hampshire, and he still finished second.

Busch enters Sunday’s AAA 500 at Texas Motor Speedway ranked fifth in the standings, 36 points behind co-leaders Matt Kenseth and Johnson.

He finished third in this race last year and won at Texas this April. He starts the No. 18 Snickers Toyota fifth on Sunday and says the confidence in his recent showings on this 1.5-mile track keep him every bit a contender.

Although he has stubbornly and steadfastly resisted looking at the standings — instead focusing only on winning races — he conceded this week, "I won’t lie, yeah, I peeked."

"Had a bad weekend there (Kansas) and lost a lot of points that we made back up," said Busch, who was ranked as high as second, only eight points behind Kenseth after the Chase opener in Chicago.

"It’s certainly going to be a lot tougher now than what it had been and obviously we’re going to have to have some luck on our side and the other guys aren’t going to be able to have luck on their side. If you have bad luck with the front two then that’s going to bring five guys back into it. It’s going to be an even tighter race and that’s what the fans want to see, probably the media wants to see and what I want to see.

"But," he added with a pause, "I bet you the front two don’t (have bad luck)."

That’s not to say Busch isn’t pleased with the improvement his Joe Gibbs Racing team has made in Chase conditions. Having everyone step up has been the silver lining on whether he can pull off a late-season run at the big trophy or not. They are in the game with three races remaining.

"We’ve been fast, we’ve been consistent, we’ve done a good job," Busch said. "I screwed up big time in Kansas and we didn’t quite get the car the way we needed to for Martinsville (last week) and we suffered there a little bit.

"You don’t have that option here anymore in the Chase, for as much as those guys up front are running well. We’ve got to be on top of our game and come out here and (do) the best we can, lead all the laps and win all the races in these final three and see where the points stack up. If we do that and we still don’t win it, we did our job. If we don’t do that then essentially we didn’t do our job."

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Posted on by Holly Cain

Veteran chimes in on racing etiquette following Johnson-Biffle fracas

RELATED: Full Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup coverage

FORT WORTH, Texas — Jeff Gordon doesn’t have a vested interest in NASCAR’s latest post-race brouhaha on pit road between Greg Biffle and Jimmie Johnson, who were involved in a heated exchange caught on television Sunday at Martinsville Speedway.

But the wily veteran Gordon didn’t flinch when asked what he thought about proper etiquette for apologies and make-ups between drivers.

"I think it’s ridiculous that we are texting and calling one another after incidents like that," the four-time champ Gordon said. "There is only one reason you call the guy and that is because you don’t want a confrontation. You don’t want an issue, you don’t want the guy to wreck you at the next race and you are worried about where you are going to finish in points and all that stuff."

Johnson said Friday that he and Biffle exchanged texts but had not actually spoken following the emotional confrontation.

As Johnson was doing interviews with reporters on pit road last Sunday, Biffle came up from behind, grabbed Johnson’s shoulder and pulled him around to angrily call him out on an incident during the race.

As the television cameras rolled and reporters stood nearby, Johnson tried to calm Biffle and offered to talk it out.

After having several days to analyze the situation, Johnson said he was totally caught off guard by Biffle’s reaction.

"I don’t know what kept me from swinging, to be honest," Johnson said Friday. "You never know how you’re going to react until you’re in those moments. After I realized who it was, because I was caught off-guard; I didn’t know where it came from. And it was a shock to see Greg because we were on the track and roughing each other pretty good for quite a few laps and I thought that everything had simmered down and was gone.

"And then truthfully, the most important thing in it all was after he grabbed me, the look in his eyes, I don’t even think he looked at me. He was looking around me and saw all of you (media) standing there. I think he was just as shocked that he grabbed me like that as anyone. And I’ve been in a couple of fights, not many, but he didn’t want to fight. He was just pissed. So, I think at the end of the day that was really the energy in that moment that let me stay calm and just kind of handle it how I did."

While Biffle apologized on Twitter for the way he handled the situation, he was still bristling about the incident (he thought Johnson knocked his rear bumper cover) this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway and made veiled references to the on-track incident and subsequent pit stop costing him dearly in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

With a lot at stake for both Biffle and championship co-leader Johnson, retaliation seems unlikely.

But Gordon says that doesn’t mean all is forgotten.

"I don’t remember a whole lot of things, but I can tell you every time that I was wrecked by somebody and where they rank on the list," Gordon said laughing. "There are very few guys out there that your friendship and bond off the track is stronger than your competitiveness on the race track. I don’t think that that exists a whole lot if any at all.

"Usually only the guy that is concerned about what is coming back to him is the one reaching out."

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