Watch episodes of ‘The Crossing’ as a four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champ meets a two-time Academy Award winner
Click here to watch episodes of ‘The Crossing’ with Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup contender Jeff Gordon and ‘Rush’ director Ron Howard.
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Earns his second victory of the season, first career win at Las Vegas
LAS VEGAS — Timothy Peters took advantage of a rare mistake by Ron Hornaday Jr. on the final restart at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to win the Smith’s 350 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race.
Peters started 12th and when the final caution came out late in the race, he was running second to Hornaday — known for his prowess on restarts. When the green flag flew with two laps to go, Hornaday spun his tires and Peters powered to the lead. As Hornaday faded back, Peters held off Johnny Sauter to record his seventh career victory, his second of the season and his first in Las Vegas.
"Track position was so important," said Peters. "You had to get all you could on the restarts because once you spread out that dirty air, it was bad to pass. I mean, they were crazy. I was really thankful for that last caution. I was getting good restarts all night long. Just everything went our way tonight. This is huge."
In a city where numbers mean everything, Peters, who drives the No. 17 Toyota, won the 17th race of the season in the series’ 17th race at the 1.5-mile speedway.
Sauter finished second, followed by Miguel Paludo, pole winner Ty Dillon and Darrell Wallace Jr., the highest finishing rookie in the race.
"It was a crazy race," said Sauter, who posted his seventh top-five finish of the season. "That last restart it looked like Ron spun the tires a little bit and he lost momentum. Then he fanned out and I thought, ‘Hey there’s a hole there and I’m taking it.’"
Matt Crafton held onto the series points lead with an 11th place finish.
He led two times for 30 laps and was leading with less than 30 laps to go when the handling went away on his No. 88 Toyota and he started to fall back through the running order. It marked the first time in 2013 that Crafton has finished outside the top 10.
"All of the sudden it just went dead loose," Crafton explained. "Within one lap it was a little bit loose and then it went to un-drivable and we lost one second on that run."
Crafton’s lead holds steady at 41 points over defending series champion James Buescher with five races to go in the season.
The NASCAR Camping World Truck Series will take the next two weekends off before returning to action at Talladega Superspeedway on Oct. 19.
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Team adds members from RCR Nationwide squads to improve weak point
MORE: FULL CHASE COVERAGE
DOVER, Del. — Furniture Row Racing has made substantial changes to its over-the-wall pit crew in the hopes of bolstering Kurt Busch‘s chances of contending in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.
The No. 78 team confirmed Saturday that its over-the-wall crew will feature four new members for Sunday’s event at Dover International Speedway, all of them coming from the NASCAR Nationwide Series program at Richard Childress Racing. Furniture Row and RCR share information through a technical alliance that also includes the use of Childress-built engines and chassis by the Denver-based team.
Busch is seventh in the Chase standings, 40 points behind leader Matt Kenseth. Although he carried single-car Furniture Row into the playoff for the first time, Busch has been hampered repeatedly this season by issues on pit road — including last weekend at New Hampshire, when a broken jack led to a long pit stop and an eventual 13th-place finish.
"As we have moved forward this year, the performance of the car has grown at a rate that has left our pit crew somewhat behind," said Furniture Row’s general manager, Joe Garone. "Being in the Chase and competing against the cars we’re competing against has prompted this change. The pit crew is made up of a solid group of athletes; however, we haven’t been able to find the consistency that we need to be able to move forward on pit road. We want to give every effort we can to winning races, and have been loyal to giving enough time for the guys to solidify. However, the clock is ticking forward and we felt we needed to make a change and regroup. We have reached out to our partners at RCR, and they are letting us use the crew off the (No.) 2 Nationwide car as we continue to recruit and develop our own crew."
Sunday, four of the team’s six over-the-wall crewmen will be new — front tire carrier Thad Wymer, rear tire changer Jake Lind and jack man Brian Gainey will come over from the No. 2 Nationwide team of RCR driver Brian Scott, while rear tire carrier Josh Sobecki will be used from the No. 3 Nationwide team of driver Austin Dillon.
Prior to the Chase opener two weeks ago at Chicagoland, Furniture Row began using front tire changer Matt Humphries from Scott’s team at RCR. Gas man Milan Rudanovic, who joined the No. 78 squad in the spring, remains in his position.
Furniture Row started its own pit crew this season after using one from Stewart-Haas Racing in past years. Although the team has made huge strides with Busch behind the wheel, it has been denied a trip to Victory Lane this season partly due to issues in and around pit road, like a slow final stop in the Sprint All-Star Race and a broken wheel hub last month at Bristol.
One thing Busch has enjoyed all season is speed. He was 11th in final practice Saturday at Dover, and will start the race from the ninth position. The 2004 champion of NASCAR’s premier circuit is moving to a new fourth car at SHR next season. Without setbacks on pit road, the team has the chance to finish strong in Sunday’s race.
Scott believes his regular crew is ready to step up and make that happen for the No. 78.
"They’ve earned the shot to go up there and pit those guys on Sunday," he said after finishing 11th in Saturday’s Nationwide event. "And I’m thankful for the opportunity that they’re going to have in the Sprint Cup Series. I think it will make them better in the Nationwide Series, and I think it will help Kurt’s chances … in his bid for the championship. So I think it’s a win-win. Definitely a very deserving group of guys. They’ve been pitting together forever, and they’ve got a lot of experience, and I hope to see them kick butt up there."
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Front pair in Nationwide standings now separated by just four points
Related: Nationwide Series point standings
DOVER, Del. — He might not have been aware of the details, but the message repeated over the radio told Austin Dillon all he needed to know: Big picture, big picture, big picture.
With good reason. NASCAR Nationwide Series points leader Sam Hornish Jr. had fallen two laps down after incurring a pit-road speeding penalty, opening the door for Dillon to cut deeply into the Penske Racing driver’s point advantage. Dillon did just that, finishing sixth Saturday at Dover International Speedway to pull just four points behind Hornish in the standings with five races remaining on the schedule.
"Today was a day we could capitalize on," said Dillon, who entered Saturday 15 points behind. "Now we’ve just got to beat him for five races. Beat him straight up for five races, and we’ll have the championship."
It’s the closest the Nationwide standings have been since early August, when Dillon led Hornish by three points following the event at Watkins Glen. While Sprint Cup Series regular Joey Logano was running away to victory — in a vehicle inspectors would later deem too low in the front — the greater drama was unfolding on pit road, where on lap 117 Hornish was flagged for speeding into pit road and forced to make a pass-through penalty.
The infraction dropped Hornish from 15th place to two laps down in 21st in what had already been a problematic event for the former Indianapolis 500 champion to that point. He had battled a loose race car that only got worse after an earlier two-tire pit stop, and then was finally hit with the penalty. It all added up to a 17th-place result that was his worst since he finished 34th with an overheating problem at Indianapolis.
"At the end of the day, the drive-through only cost us about four spots. The two tires is what hurt us," Hornish said. "We just need to be able to sit down, look at it and figure out how we need to be better. I feel bad for the guys, obviously, because we didn’t get out of it today what we could have. … We’ll move on to next weekend and figure out how to be better and not let it happen to us again.”
It all cracked a window of opportunity for Dillon, who lost a lap on lap 156 due to pit strategy, gained it back, and could ultimately only make up so much ground in an event that ended with the longest green-flag run — 159 laps — of any Nationwide race ever contested on the Monster Mile.
"Just a weird race, man, (with) 160-some laps green," Dillon said. "We had to make sure we could make it on fuel at the end, and we had some pretty good lap times. Car was a little loose. Fought a little loose condition all day. But up front, if we could have gotten our track position back, we were the fastest car taking off. So I’m happy with where we finished. Good points day. It could have been worse."
It certainly was for Regan Smith. The JR Motorsports driver, who led the points for 10 weeks earlier this season and once held what seemed a commanding 58-point edge, also appeared to be in position to take advantage of Hornish’s problem and cut a chunk out of a 45-point hole. But Smith gave up third to pit with 17 laps remaining and fell to a 15th-place finish, and dropped one position to fourth behind Elliott Sadler in the standings.
It only served to reinforce what’s now clearly a two-man race, with Hornish and Dillon separated by just four points and new third-place driver Sadler 42 off the lead in third. Smith is fifth, 43 back.
"I know that we’ve got five races to go and we go to some tracks that I really like — Texas, Phoenix, Miami, Charlotte. There’s not a place that I don’t like that we’re going to, so I’m really excited about what we’ve got," Hornish said.
"I also know that it’s real easy to have a day like this where you make one bad call on pit road and then there’s not another caution the entire rest of the race …. There was no time to make up anything. That’s the tough part about running the Nationwide races is that you sometimes have to take chances that you wouldn’t like to, because you’re trying to stay ahead knowing you’ve only got 200 laps … We all know what the issues were, and we’ll talk about it because whining about it now isn’t going help us get our points back. Keeping our heads down and going out there and having a good race next weekend at Kansas is what’s going continue to build the points lead back up."
Dillon was runner-up to Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in last year’s Nationwide event at Kansas, a finish that certainly fits with his goals going forward.
"Same mentality I’ve had the last three weeks — top-five, top-five, top-five," Dillon said, "and I think it will win."
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No. 11 driver finding comfort in impact on team’s success
DOVER, Del. — Denny Hamlin emerged from his No. 11 hauler after an extensive debrief with his race team, the top half of his black and orange firesuit unzipped and dangling around his waist. Given his role these days at Joe Gibbs Racing, a white lab coat might have been more fitting.
With teammates Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch first and second, respectively, in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Hamlin has become the mad scientist tinkering with experiments that might benefit his stable mates gunning for a title. That’s been evident in the first two weeks of the playoff — at Chicagoland where Hamlin lost an engine trying a different package under the hood, and at New Hampshire where he finished 12th trying a setup different from what the other JGR drivers used.
All of this while Hamlin and crew chief Darian Grubb are trying to find some improvement of their own, near the finish of a season that was interrupted by a back injury that forced the driver to miss most of five races, and is concluding with him missing the Chase for the first time in his career.
"It’s a tough balance, I’d say. We’re trying to get better, and we’re chipping away at getting better. … It’s difficult, because you know every best, bad-ass car that comes down the line is going to go to those guys from this point on. Motors, and all that stuff," Hamlin said at Dover International Speedway.
"But we still should be able to be more competitive that what we’ve been, which has been disappointing. I’ve got eight races to get better, and there’s a lot of testing we’re about to do that’s going to make us better. I see things heading in the right direction, at least. We’re at least not on the downfall. We’re at least climbing our way back to being more competitive than we have been. So at least I can take some solace in that."
As he can in helping his teammates maintain their position in the Chase, where Kenseth and Busch have finished first and second — in that order — in each of the playoff’s first two races. Hamlin’s team is in full-blown experimentation mode, trying engine and setup packages that might aid Kenseth or Busch later in the playoff, while at the same time trying to take points away from other championship hopefuls by finishing in front of them.
Meanwhile, he’s also trying to lay the groundwork for a better 2014, and keep alive his streak of winning at least one race in every year of his Cup career as a full-time driver. Toward that end, his 12th-place finish last week at New Hampshire was his best in more than three months. He may be the odd man out at JGR when it comes to the championship, but Kenseth stressed he’s still a part of the process.
"Certainly he’s not the odd man out at all when it comes to meetings, trying to perform, trying to finish," said Kenseth, who leads Busch by 14 points. "He’s still got a lot at stake this year. I know he wants to run the best he can every week. I know he wants to get back to Victory Lane this year and get everything kind of rolling along. Get some momentum back, get that feel back in the team like everything is clicking and going good again before the year is over … carry that momentum over the offseason and build on that and get ready for ’14. It’s not like it’s a wasted year."
It certainly helps when he can have a direct impact, which may have been the case a week ago in New Hampshire. Information gleaned from the No. 11 team in a test session and the first race this season in the Granite State helped Kenseth turn the tide on a track where he had never won before last Sunday. And Busch said the setups he and Kenseth used at Loudon were both variations of a setup pioneered by Hamlin, a two-time winner at the track.
"Denny has always been fast at Loudon, so spring of last year we bolted in Denny Hamlin’s setup," Busch said. "We just said, ‘Here it is, go figure it out. It works, so I’ve got to figure out what I’ve got to do to be good at Loudon and drive it.’
"Since then, we’ve only made little, little tweaks to it, and haven’t ventured too far from it to develop the Kyle Busch Loudon setup. So the last two times we’ve been at Loudon, the spring we led a of of laps and finished second, and this time … we got to second at the end of the race and had a fast car. Matt did essentially the same thing. They just bolted in our setup, which is a Denny setup, and just learned how to drive it. (Kenseth) spent the spring (race) learning it, and obviously he conquered it in the fall."
Contributions like that certainly help Hamlin weather his first Chase-less season a little bit better. So does progress on his problematic back, which has given him trouble since before he fractured a vertebra in a final-lap crash at Fontana on March 24. Treatment a few weeks ago helped, and has Hamlin hoping he won’t need surgery at the end of the season as he once feared. "Two or three weeks of not racing will probably go a long way," he said.
Then there was Thursday night, when Hamlin was honored in Washington with the March of Dimes’ most prestigious award for his work in raising awareness on behalf of a charity that helps babies born premature. Hamlin’s No. 11 car occasionally sports a March of Dimes paint scheme, and earlier this week he visited Capitol Hill to lobby for a bill that would expand and improve screening programs for newborns.
"I got to meet a lot of great people, and we’ve made some headway, I think, in the Senate and House tying to get that bill passed," said Hamlin, who has a daughter of his own. "It was a great experience. It was an honor for me to be recognized by them for being an advocate. I’m just lucky enough to be receiving the award when, really, I was chosen to be the advocate for them. I was humbled, to say the least."
This entire NASCAR season has been humbling for a driver who entered the year with championship aspirations and is finishing it in a supportive role. Having an impact on his teammates’ success helps, but the better he runs, the more assistance he can give to Kenseth and Busch as they continue their parallel quests for a title.
"It’s satisfying, but in the same instance you’ve got to evolve, and I feel like we haven’t evolved that well," Hamlin said. "We have seemed to struggle since the new types of setups have come into our sport. But my job for these last eight races is to be a help to them in any kind of way that I can. Ultimately my goal is to finish better so I can be between them and other Chase guys. We beat probably five or six last week, which is good, but we’d like to beat 10 of them."
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Earnhardt credits consistency for first season with multiple poles since 2002
MORE: FULL CHASE COVERAGE
DOVER, Del. — Not since 2002 had Dale Earnhardt Jr. won more than one NASCAR Sprint Cup Series pole in a single season.
Until Friday.
Earnhardt’s track-record run at Dover International Speedway, however, held a significance deeper than merely claiming the top starting position for Sunday’s AAA 400, the third race in the Chase.
To Earnhardt, the Coors Light Pole-winning run was emblematic of the progress he has made with crew chief Steve Letarte and his entire No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet team.
"I would say it’s a reflection of where the program is," Earnhardt told the NASCAR Wire Service. "Just how Steve and I, since we first started working together … we have gotten better each year. One of the things we started focusing on last year was qualifying, and I think that has rolled over into this season.
"We continue to put importance on that and try to improve on that. The racing and the cars and the speed the cars have in the races has also improved. We really focused on qualifying last year and even more so this year."
It’s also a function of more effective communication between driver and crew chief.
"He and I are working better together," Earnhardt said. "The longer we work together, the better we get at it and the more we understand each other and the more he understands what I need in the car. We have also kept the majority of the team intact from the beginning. That’s so important, to keep that together if you can, because everybody sort of learns what they can about each other.
"Steve is really good. … He has made me a better race car driver. He makes his engineers better. I mean, he is really good at his job. So he deserves a lot of credit for us improving and being able to get these poles and just qualifying better."
Earnhardt maintained his pace during Saturday’s practice sessions at the Monster Mile. He was second quickest behind teammate Kasey Kahne in the morning session and fifth fastest in the final practice.
A time to heal
After a tumultuous month on and off the race track, Martin Truex Jr. finally got some welcome news. The wrist he broke during an accident at Bristol in late August is healing.
The wrist was perhaps the least of his worries. A 50-point penalty from NASCAR, levied after Michael Waltrip Racing, the organization that fields cars for Truex, attempted to manipulate the outcome of the final regular-season Sprint Cup race at Richmond, knocked Truex out of the Chase spot he thought he had earned as a Wild Card.
Truex also suffered from the fallout, learning that his primary sponsor, auto parts retailer NAPA, was opting out of its commitment to MWR at the end of the season.
But the wrist, at least, is on the mend.
"Yeah, we started to see this week it looked a little bit better, so that was good news," Truex said after Friday’s time trials at Dover. "The doctor was pretty certain we won’t need surgery now, which is a great, great news after all the bad news I’ve gotten here lately. So, hopefully, we’ll keep a cast on it obviously until it heals completely, and then I’ll probably wear some sort of brace at least in the race car for the remainder of the year just to make sure everything’s good, just because my wrist will be weak when I first get the cast off.
"Right now, when I get my cast switched out each week, it’s like my wrist is really stiff. It doesn’t have a lot of mobility already, so it will take me a few weeks to get that back to 100 percent. So we’ll probably have some sort of brace for the last few races at least."
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Logano earns third Nationwide win of season, Larson finishes second
DOVER, Del.—When Joey Logano sets a record, he does it in style.
Logano didn’t just win Saturday’s 5-hour Energy 200 NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Dover International Speedway. He crushed the rest of the field in taking the checkered flag in a record four straight events at the Monster Mile.
No other driver has ever won four straight races at Dover in any of NASCAR’s top three national series, and Logano accomplished the feat decisively, finishing 14.590 seconds ahead of runner-up Kyle Larson.
Kevin Harvick ran third, more than 24 seconds back, and Brian Vickers came home fourth. Logano, Larson, Harvick and Vickers were the only drivers on the lead lap at the finish.
The victory was Logano’s third this season and the 21st of his career. It was also the series-best 11th victory for the No. 22 Penske Ford, a car shared by Logano, Brad Keselowski, AJ Allmendinger and Ryan Blaney.
"It’s just really cool to get four in a row here at Dover," Logano said. "That’s pretty awesome. It’s been my favorite race track ever since I started here. Yes, even when I barrel-rolled down the back straightaway (in a 2009 wreck in the Sprint Cup Series), it’s still my favorite place, and I think we showed that today."
In post-race inspection, NASCAR determined that the ride height of Logano’s race-winning car was too low in front on both sides. The sanctioning body will review the infraction at its weekly competition meeting, and penalties, if any, will be announced next week.
Arguably, Kyle Busch had the fastest car—at least during the early portion of the race-but Busch stayed on the track under the first two cautions, both of which fell within the first 35 laps of the race. When a third caution failed to materialize, Busch was forced to pit under green on Lap 87, leaving him unable to complete the race without stopping again.
Logano, on the other hand, brought his No. 22 Ford to pit road on Lap 37, under the second caution, and made his second stop, under green, on Lap 116. That left him within the window of finishing the race without another trip to pit road.
On the Lap 37 stop, crew chief Jeremy Bullins took the time to make adjustments that corrected a loose handling condition, and from that point on, Logano’s car was unbeatable. The 22-year-old driver led 106 of the 200 laps, including the last 59.
When the pit stops cycled out by Lap 124, Busch held a lead of almost 10 seconds, but Logano, on fresher tires, cut into the advantage in large chunks. On Lap 142, Logano caught and passed Busch’s No. 54 Toyota and pulled away to a lead of more than four seconds by Lap 175.
"When we came out on new tires (on Lap 117), I radioed to Jeremy, ‘The car’s right on. It’s right where I need it to be,’" Logano said. "When your car’s driving good here, and you have exactly what it needs, when you get to lapped traffic, it doesn’t even slow you down.
"But if it’s loose like it was (earlier), you get to a lapped car, and you’re just kind of stuck. He (Bullins) had it right where it needed to be that I was able to pass cars when I got to them and really make up that gap a lot. In these Nationwide races, having a fast car is one thing, but being able to get through the lapped traffic as quick as possible is the key to winning these things."
With the race still under green on Lap 176—and six other cars on the lead lap-Busch was forced to pit and dropped to 14th, one lap down. He finished eighth.
A pit road speeding penalty incurred on Lap 117 cost Sam Hornish Jr. most of his series lead. Hornish finished 17th and left Dover four points ahead of sixth-place finisher Austin Dillon, who trimmed 11 points from Hornish’s advantage entering the race.
With the final 160 laps run under green, team’s had limited opportunities to make strategic calls and adjustments that might have counteracted Logano’s advantage. Harvick said slick, treacherous conditions actually contributed to the long green-flag run to end the race.
"When the cars are really hard to drive, you have to slow ’em down, and when you really have to slow ’em down, there’s a lot less chance for things to happen," Harvick explained. "Nothing surprises me. I know in the (Sprint) Cup series we’ve run races from start to finish without a caution.
"It’s been a long time, but it has happened."
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Driver of No. 15 finds way to be ‘one with himself’ as focus turns from Richmond to Chase
Related: Lineup for AAA 400 | Pit stall assignments
DOVER, Del. — Clearly Clint Bowyer was less comfortable stretching his body into the yoga position "Downward-Facing Dog" early Saturday morning than he is driving 200 mph in a tightly-packed group of race cars inches from a concrete wall.
But Bowyer was game and good-natured as he joined 100 fans for a yoga session presented by Bowyer’s sponsor 5-hour Energy as part of a Living Beyond Breast Cancer event in the Dover International Speedway infield shortly after sunrise.
Local yoga instructor Jessica Coyne called for Bowyer and the others to "Take a deep breath. Exhale. And release the tension."
"Calm any mental chatter," Coyne instructed the group. "Extend your energy to the sky."
Holding his hands together in a prayer-like pose above his head and balancing on one leg, Bowyer exclaimed with a laugh, "I see the light."
And perhaps he has.
After a couple of uncomfortable weeks at the center of a NASCAR controversy and the recipient of a 50-point penalty to start the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Bowyer has weathered criticism from fans and hard questions from the racing media.
For the first time in his career, the popular and fun-loving driver has even been booed during pre-race driver introductions.
So if Saturday provided a little good karma and Kumbaya for Clint, then who could begrudge?
"Yoga is probably not the sport for me," Bowyer said. "I clearly had a different opinion on what yoga was. I don’t know how you get ‘one’ with yourself. I couldn’t even do the victory breathing. So that’s a bad sign.
"I appreciate (5-hour Energy) coming up with neat, fun things like this to interact with our fans and share a laugh. And trust me, me doing yoga is a laugh."
On a more serious note, Bowyer did get some good news this week.
He found out Friday sponsor 5-hour Energy would remain with his Michael Waltrip Racing No. 15 Toyota. The company said it was re-evaluating its relationship with the team following the Sept. 7 race at Richmond, where NASCAR determined the team "manipulated" the race outcome.
"I’m happy that 5-hour Energy has always supported me from Day 1," Bowyer said. "They’re the reason I found a new home at MWR and left RCR in the first place. It’s been a great ride with a lot of success for both of us."
The news came just as Bowyer returned from a hunting trip to Wyoming with Ryan Newman, one of the drivers directly affected by the MWR team’s Richmond antics.
The trip — part of Realtree Outdoors "Driven to Hunt" series that will air on ESPN — had been arranged months ago.
Still, Newman joked about the situation, saying, "He (Bowyer) only went to the hospital once. It wasn’t that big of a wound, and I didn’t hit him quite where I wanted to.
"But nevertheless, we had a lot of fun and I want to thank Bill Jordan and everybody at Realtree for giving us the opportunity to just get away and relax."
Now, however, is go time.
After spending 12 weeks of the regular season ranked no lower than third in the standings, Bowyer is currently in 10th place — 48 points behind leader Matt Kenseth — entering Sunday’s AAA 400 (2 p.m. ET, ESPN).
He is still winless on the season and has finishes of ninth (Chicago) and 17th (New Hampshire) in the first two Chase races.
"We certainly haven’t had the last couple weeks we’re accustomed to having, especially Chase time," Bowyer said. "I’ve definitely been more concerned about that than anything.
"We’re racers and when you go to the track and don’t perform, it’s frustrating. We kind of beat ourselves, made some bad decisions and probably cost us 15 points in the last two races I can pinpoint. We should have zigged instead of zagged. Everybody has fast race cars; you have to make better decisions than the other guy.
"We’ve just got to get back to doing what we’re doing."
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Drivers in the Chase field know this playoff run is far from over
DOVER, Del. — Pundits and super fans may be all too ready to declare the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup a three-man race only two weeks into the 10-race run for the title.
After all, Matt Kenseth and his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch have finished first and second in both Chase races with five-time Cup champ Jimmie Johnson’s pair of top-fives enough to keep him lurking just behind.
But there are 10 other drivers in the Chase field who aren’t so convinced the class of the field has been crowned yet. The suggestion that anything is settled really rankles the rank and file who absolutely know that with eight more weeks of racing — beginning with Sunday’s AAA 400 (2 p.m. ET, ESPN) at Dover International Speedway — anything is still possible.
“To be two races into the Chase and say it’s a three-man race already seems silly,’’ Greg Biffle said almost scoldingly on Friday. “Take, for instance, last week. We finished third and moved up six spots in the points to fifth.’’
So while Kenseth leads Busch and Johnson by 14 and 18 points, respectively, Biffle’s Roush-Fenway Racing teammate Carl Edwards is fourth, a healthy 36 points back. Biffle is 38 behind and Kevin Harvick, 39.
That’s a sizeable gap between third place Johnson and fourth place Edwards. But sizable is not insurmountable.
“It’s easy to look at it that way, but I’m not putting my guard down,’’ Johnson said.
“We still have Talladega and a lot of these tracks can take out multiple cars. You have that risk here [at Dover] if something happens, you usually take a car or two with you.
“I’m certainly looking forward and there are only two guys that I’m paying attention to right now. So in that mindset, sure you can call it a three-man race. But it’s still way too early to count many out yet.’’
Busch and Harvick have publicly declared their disinterest in the standings. Harvick claimed not to even know who was leading or by how much.
“I think it’s too early,’’ Busch said of anyone declaring it a three-man race. “But also I’m not paying attention to the points. I could guess who’s first, second and third in points, but I really don’t care right now.
“We’re just with the mindset to continue on the path that we have all year long and that’s to continue to run consistently and to get good finishes and if we can win, we try to win.
“I’ve also felt all along that if you finish second every single Chase race then you could have a really good shot at winning a championship that way.’’
When it comes to a winning record, Biffle has multiple wins at four of the remaining eight venues, including Dover, Kansas, Texas and Homestead-Miami. Edwards and Harvick have similarly impressive records at upcoming tracks.
Edwards has wins at Dover, Texas, Phoenix and Homestead-Miami. Harvick has victories at Charlotte, Martinsville, Talladega, and Phoenix.
Even Clint Bowyer, who is 10th in points (48 behind Kenseth) refuses to concede anything yet. He reminded reporters Saturday that he made up nearly 100 points on Johnson in the final four weeks of the regular season.
“It wasn’t like we were running down a start-and-park,’’ Bowyer joked.
Sunday’s polesitter Dale Earnhardt Jr. has seen extreme fortunes in two weeks already. His Chevy had engine troubles in the Chase opener at Chicago, but he rebounded with a sixth place at New Hampshire last week moving him from last in the Chase standings to 11th — 62 behind Kenseth.
His crew chief Steve Letarte took to Twitter this week insisting that the team wasn’t giving up, but realistically needed some wins to mount any challenge regardless of whether the championship leaders suffer an off-week or two.
“I expect our competition to be tough every week,’’ said Earnhardt, who has wins at four of the upcoming Chase tracks.
“Nothing really surprises me when they perform well. We are not really going to count points and I’m not going to sit here and figure out how far I’m behind and come up with some equation that I need to be perfect to gain points each week.
“We are just going to show up and try to run hard and be smart. If we can unload great cars like this it makes that all easier. We are going to try to win some races before the year is out. I would be really disappointed if we don’t win a race this season because I think we are a better team than we were last year.
“I felt we’ve come so close so many times so we would just like to get out there and get some trophies. The points will take care of themselves when you are doing that.”
Even 12th place Joey Logano refused to concede anything with two months of competition left and 69 points to make up.
“We’re not out of it yet, we can still do it,’’ Logano said.
“The fat lady isn’t singing yet. She may be warming up her voice, but she isn’t singing.’’
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