Fryer's Five: The Chase isn't that tight
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So much for self-elimination in this Chase for the Sprint Cup championship field.
A week after at least three drivers seemed to take themselves out of title contention through on-track mistakes and poor performance, NASCAR suddenly has the closest championship race in Chase history.
Chase drivers were the first seven to cross the finish line Sunday at Kansas Speedway, and as NASCAR moves on to California for Round 4 next weekend, just 101 points separate nine drivers in the standings.
But is it really that close?
Greg Biffle won the race to shave 55 points from his deficit and climb off the ropes of elimination. But he's still 85 points behind the leader who, by the way, happens to be four-time defending series champion Jimmie Johnson.
Just how did Johnson get to the top of the leaderboard? Well, he had a poor qualifying run that nearly damaged his engine when the temperatures got too hot, then he spun through the grass as the final practice session came to an end, and he struggled with a mediocre car for the first part of the race.
But there he was at the end, running second in yet another improbable comeback.
So before everyone gets all excited about how close the Chase now is, first ask: Doesn't it seem like we've seen this movie before?
If Johnson continues to run the way he did Sunday, it's not going to matter if the Biffles of the Chase pull out the occasional win. It will make no difference if Kevin Harvick knocks down consistent top fives or if Denny Hamlin continues to keep pace.
Until Johnson has a really, really bad day – and remember, right now a bad day for him was 25th at New Hampshire in the Chase opener – nobody is going to catch him for the championship. Since slogging his way through that New Hampshire race, Johnson has done alright for himself – a win and a second-place finish to be exact.
And where does he go next? California, where he's not too shabby. Johnson has won the last two races at California, four of the last six and five overall. From there it's Charlotte and then Martinsville, and he's a six-time winner at both tracks.
Assuming he's as good as we think he will be the next three weeks, it won't really matter what happens at Talladega, the so-called "wild card" Chase race.
So on paper, the Chase field looks pretty good right now. In reality, we've all seen this show before.
What went on in Kansas:
1. It was the weekend to strike back at Kyle Busch
Who knew that when Joey Logano got aggressive to beat Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch in Saturday's Nationwide Race that it was a sign of things to come?
Tired of finishing second, especially to Busch, Logano didn't back down in the closing laps of Saturday's race. And he wasn't the only one.
David Reutimann also was apparently tired of Busch, particularly after contact with Busch caused Reutimann to spin early in the Sprint Cup race on Sunday. He retaliated about 100 laps later by slamming into Busch's door, forcing him into the wall.
Logano, who simply ran Busch high up the track on a restart and forcing Busch to let off the gas, only denied Busch a Nationwide Series victory. Reutimann's act of defiance was costly for Busch, who was running seventh at the time and ended up finishing 21st in the Cup race and dropping 80 points behind leader Johnson.
Afterward, Reutimann showed no remorse.
"I don't care if you're in the Chase or not, you need to think about who you're running over when you're running over them," he said. "I don't care who you are. If you're in the Chase, you have as much responsibility to drive with respect as I do to everybody else.
"If you guys want me to feel bad about what happened, I feel bad, yeah – that our car got wrecked and it ruined our day. That's what I feel bad about."
Although Busch backed off his in-race demand that NASCAR penalize Reutimann, he didn't understand Reutimann's timing and wondered why the payback couldn't wait until next year's regular season, when the stakes aren't so high for Busch.
That's a fair point by Busch, but Reutimann had a right to be angry. He's been in the wrong place at the wrong time too many times to count, and has seen many a strong run spoiled by somebody else.
It happened just the week before at Dover, when Ryan Newman wrecked Reutimann to spoil what could have been a good day. Much like Logano did earlier this year in confronting Kevin Harvick, and again on Saturday when he got tough on the track with Busch, there comes a time to stand up and show you won't be run over anymore.
Although Reutimann and Busch don't have a particularly memorable on-track history of altercations, the slight that Reutimann can't move past came after Bristol, when Busch beat him and said Reutimann didn't know how to correctly drive on that track.
Reutimann, who suffered through a nasty case of food poisoning to finish second that day, took great exception to Busch's assessment.
And in defending his actions Sunday, he made a valid point.
"You guys can sugarcoat it all the time, but he wrecked me," Reutimann said. "You can tell me how bad he wants it, how hard he drives, how much he wants it above everybody else. That's all fine."
Reutimann is right. Busch learned this weekend that drivers are going to race him how they think he races them.
And he may not like it very much.
2. Greg Biffle stepped up when it mattered most
Biffle was on the verge of elimination headed into Sunday's race. He didn't run well at New Hampshire, and Dover was derailed when he got trapped on pit road during a caution for teammate Matt Kenseth.
The second win of the season moved Biffle up only one spot in the Chase standings to eighth, but it sliced his 140-point deficit on the leader to 85 points. And it came with an additional $100,000 bonus for Biffle and his Roush-Fenway Racing crew because Ford promised a bonus if one of its teams made it to victory lane.
"Everybody asked us if we're out of the Chase, have we given up?" the Roush Fenway Racing driver said. "The 16 team will never give up. A win here propelled us up there. Maybe we'll go do the same next week."
Biffle was certainly among those written off after Dover, and it may very well be that winning a few more races is his only realistic shot at winning the championship. He has one career victory at California, in 2005. But he was 10th in February and 20th last October, and will have to be a lot better this weekend if he's going to stay in contention.
3. Hamlin looked human again
After a second-place run at New Hampshire and a ninth at Dover, his worst track in the Chase, Hamlin appeared to be in great shape.
His confidence was soaring, too. With a 35-point lead over Johnson, he figured he'd at least finish in the top five at Kansas and head to California still on top of the standings.
He found out very quickly how wrong he was on that prediction.
Hamlin's car was off from the very start, and he and crew chief Mike Ford had to scramble to pull out a 12th-place finish. It dropped him to second in the standings, eight points behind Johnson.
Hamlin had a good attitude after the race, though, focusing instead on the remaining seven races in the Chase.
"You're going to have to run well all 10 of these races," said Hamlin. "The good part is we didn't panic and get ourselves into a wreck or something like that. That's the thing. It's just you've got to make the most of your bad days, and if this is a bad day for us, then we're going to rebound next weekend. We're going to just keep fighting. That's all we can do."
Hamlin had an idea of where he wanted to finish in each Chase race, but falling short of his goals for Kansas will require an adjustment going forward.
"You've still got to stay focused and keep them feasible," Hamlin said. "If we go next week and finish in the top three, we can't be disappointed with that. Our goal over the next few races is to win. I feel like we can do that. We've just got to keep our head on straight."
4. Kevin Harvick got his groove back:
Harvick was really consistent while leading the points for 20 weeks of the regular season, so it was surprising to see him get off to such a lackluster start in the Chase.
He snapped out of it Sunday at Kansas, where he finished third after driving his way through the field because of a mediocre qualifying effort. His run moved him up two spots in the standings to third, and he's now just 30 points out of the lead.
"We feel good about where we're at," Harvick said. "That's what got us here was those solid top-five finishes and the things that we did during the year. So we've just got to keep doing those things and keep our cars in contention to run up front and lead some laps and get those points, and we'll see where we're at when we get to Homestead."
California could be a big weekend for Harvick. It was there in February that he realized he could run with Johnson. The two battled for the victory, and if not for Harvick scraping the wall late in the race, he might have won the race.
5. Clint Bowyer has given up on the championship
His last-ditch effort comes Tuesday before NASCAR's chief appellate officer, and Bowyer has written off any chance of having his 150-point penalty reversed.
In fact, he thinks team owner Richard Childress is wasting his time even going before John Middlebrook, who will hear his first appeal since taking the job at the start of this season.
"I told Richard it's not worth fighting," Bowyer said. "In my opinion, their minds are made up. It is what it is and if you want to be a part of this great thing we call a sport, you better just go on and enjoy what it is."
Bowyer won the Chase opener at New Hampshire, but was docked 150 points when NASCAR said his car failed inspection. Since then, he's been terrible: He was 25th at Dover, admitting the drama had gotten the best of his race team, and then he really struggled through Sunday's race at home track Kansas Speedway.
Bowyer was running in the 30s for a huge chunk of the race before rallying his way to a 15th-place finish. Because of that, even if his penalty is overturned, Bowyer will still be out of the championship hunt.
He's currently 12th in the standings, 252 points behind Johnson.
It's hopeful that once Middlebrook's decision is rendered, NASCAR will give full details of what exactly it is that Richard Childress Racing was penalized for. The entire process needs to be explained, from the close call on Bowyer's Richmond car all the way through the New Hampshire inspection.
There's been such a marked drop off in Bowyer's performance since his run into the Chase that the public is now sneering, "This is what happens when he has to drive a legal race car."
That's not fair to Bowyer and his No. 33 team, and the fine print on exactly what happened is deserved.
And while NASCAR's at it, the sanctioning body should stop using the term "random" when selecting Bowyer's car for further inspection the past three weeks. It's NASCAR's right to take Bowyer's car every week from here until the end of the season, and when the cars of Johnson and Mark Martin came close to failing inspection last fall, NASCAR took the cars for at least a month.
NASCAR needs to call it what it is, and tell the public what's going on once and for all.
