Race for final Chase spots is drenched in drama
This is how the Chase is supposed to work.
For seven men, it all comes down to Saturday night. The top five positions are locked into the Chase For The NASCAR Sprint Cup field.
The next two need only to start to guarantee their position in the championship field. But positions eighth through 14th are battling for those next five spots. They all think that, if they get in, theirs is the team that can contend for the 2008 Cup title.
Entering Saturday night's race at Richmond International Raceway, nerves will be frayed. Certainly drivers like Joe Gibbs Racing's Tony Stewart (eighth in the standings), Roush Fenway Racing's Matt Kenseth (ninth) and Hendrick Motorsports' Jeff Gordon (10th) have advantages of more than 100 points on the 13th-place team and seem to be in solid Chase position.
JGR's Denny Hamlin has a 93-point edge over 13th. But an early crash or a mechanical failure coupled with a strong run by someone else, and these men could be in danger.
The real fight to the finish, though, should come from the men behind them. Spring Richmond race winner Clint Bowyer and his Richard Childress Racing team are 12th; Roush Fenway Racing's David Ragan, who was third there a year ago, is 13th; and Gillett Evernham Motorsports' Kasey Kahne, a Richmond Cup race winner in 2005, is 14th.
These are the men, the teams, who will sweat their way through the race. They're the ones who will carefully watch the cars around them, that will double- and triple-check the parts on the cars, that will hope to avoid the potential pitfalls racing on a short track like this .75-mile oval creates.
And that's how it should be with a playoff spot on the line.
