MONDAY MORNING CREW CHIEF: Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards, Jimmie Johnson gain momentum heading into Chase

The top three finishers at Atlanta all left there thinking they can be threats in the Chase.

Tony Stewart’s victory was his first of the season. Stewart was 16th in the standings just 12 races ago, but is now fourth. He has top-10 finishes in 11 of the last 13 races, six in the top fives.

Last year, Stewart entered the Chase atop the standings after the regular season but wasn’t a factor in the Chase.

“It’s been a lot of little steps in the last 10 to 12 races, I would say, that nobody’s really noticed it, but we have noticed it internally,” Stewart said. “It’s a much better feeling right now this time of year than it was a year ago. I mean, we were on such a high leading the points, and had won races already.

“But at this stage, we were pointing downhill and this year, I feel like we are pointing uphill.”

Stewart believes there’s still more hill to climb.

“I hope we are not as high as we are going to get on the thing,” Stewart said. “I think we’ve got room to be better and I think we’ve got guys right now that nights like tonight are what keep these guys excited about the long hours they are putting in and the hard work they are putting in.

“When you can help deliver some results like this, it makes those guys work that much harder to keep doing that every week.”

Carl Edwards finished second for his fourth top-five finish in his last five races. After securing only six top-10 finishes over the first 17 races, Edwards has seven top-10s in his last eight.

“I know we don’t look like we did in 2008, but we’re better set to go race for that championship now than we’ve ever been,” said Edwards, who had won six regular-season races in 2008 and then three in the Chase.

About the only thing Edwards doesn’t have in his recent surge is a victory.

“I used to never believe in momentum, but I’ve never run so poorly for so long,” said Edwards, who has not won in his last 61 races. “Now, I’m seeing this turnaround and it’s been a couple of months and I think I understand the team more and I understand where we’ve been gaining.

“So, for that reason, I believe in this momentum that we have and I believe it will apply to future races. You can’t do anything about a cut tire or a broken valve spring or something like that, but at least we’ve proven to ourselves the last couple months that we can do it and that feels good for us.”

Jimmie Johnson, who finished third at Atlanta, ended a string of seven consecutive races with no finish better than 10th and only two top-10 finishes.

“We have had some problems on the mile-and-a-half, 2-mile tracks and tonight with the setup we brought and the way we worked on things, it seemed we could adjust the car and improve throughout the night and be there at the end of the race,” Johnson said.

“I feel like we are going down the right path. I know that we have run better than our finishes show over the last few months. We have had a bunch of incidents, on top of running bad at a few tracks. I can’t deny that but I’m excited to clinch [a Chase spot]. I just don’t want to go into Richmond and worry about racing my way through that and so that’s a huge relief for myself and this team.”

Pit Strategy Pays Off For Kurt Busch

At a track where fresh tires were so important, Kurt Busch gambled and got a sixth-place finish with a car that given him headaches most of the night.

Busch stayed out to take the lead on lap 272 while most of the field pitted. He was able to stay in the top 10 until a caution flag came out after a 21-lap green-flag run. He wound up sixth.

“We only had two laps on our tires and the other competitors had two cycles which made it like six laps,” Busch said. “So, it made sense for us to stay out. It was the fastest that the car was all night. We’re missing something aero-wise. I’m not sure what was going on.”

The struggles caught the team by surprise.

“I want to thank Kurt personally and the guys for hanging in there to get a finish like that,” crew chief Steve Addington said. “It’s amazing that somebody can hang in there and put up with what we put him through today.”

Sorenson Good At Atlanta, Likely Out At Richmond

Reed Sorenson finished 14th driving Red Bull Racing’s No. 83 car in his eighth start as one of the replacement drivers for Brian Vickers, who has been sidelined by blood clots since May.

Sorenson has had an eighth-place finish at Daytona and a 15th at Bristol in the substitute role.

“It was a long night,” Sorenson said. “We were trapped a lap down and we almost took the wave-around and we didn’t. We tried to get it the normal way to get the lucky dog [free pass] and we got that. Then the last run there was pretty good and fought our way back up.

“The car was decent the last half of the race and was pretty good. We were just trapped a lap down. We didn’t get any damage on the car, it was pretty good. I think we learned some things about the car so it was a good weekend overall.”

While he’s had back-to-back top-15 finishes, Sorenson likely won’t be in the car for Richmond. Red Bull Racing officials confirmed they are testing German touring car champion Mattias Ekstrom on Tuesday and if the test goes well, Ekstrom will race at Richmond.

Ekstrom drove for the team at Infineon Raceway earlier this year.

Labor Day Weekend Crowd Off This Year

The race at Atlanta had more empty seats than the first Labor Day weekend race there last year.

The track will lose one of its Cup dates in 2011 with the Labor Day weekend event as its only Cup race.

Last year, NASCAR’s race report listed the estimated attendance at 111,300. The NASCAR estimate for Sunday was 93,200.

The estimated attendance for the race at Atlanta last March was 85,000.