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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Pressure On For Chase Drivers
In 2006, Tony Stewart lost a 97-point margin for the final Chase spot...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted September 04, 2010   Hampton, GA
Tony Stewart hasn't won at Auto Club Speedway. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
What do the top 11 drivers in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series have in common? They’re glad they aren’t Clint Bowyer right now.

Bowyer, you see, is the bubble man in the NASCAR Sprint Cup points standings right now. He’s 12th in points with two races to go until the field is set for the Chase for the Sprint Cup and the top 12 drivers locked in to NASCAR’s playoff round.

Fortunately for Bowyer, he has a 100-point lead over Jamie McMurray and a 101-point lead over Mark Martin, which should be enough to safely lock him in. No driver has ever failed to make the Chase when he led by at least 100 points with two races to go in the regular season.

Still, stranger things can happen. A blown tire, a failure of a $1 part or getting caught in someone else’s accident could cost Bowyer dearly in points. And that’s why his peers are glad they aren’t in Bowyer’s spot.

Just ask Tony Stewart.

In 2006, when the Chase field was just 10 drivers, Stewart came into the 25th race of the season with a 97-point lead over 11th-place Kasey Kahne. But Kahne won the 25th race, while Stewart finished ninth. The following week at Richmond, Kahne scored a third-place finish, as Stewart struggled to come home 18th.

That put Kahne in the Chase, and knocked Stewart, then the reigning Sprint Cup champion, out altogether.

So if anyone understands what Bowyer, McMurray and Martin are dealing with right now, it’s Stewart. “The longest eight days these guys will have in their entire year is these next eight days,” said Stewart. “It's not a fun position to be in, for sure.”

And the most frustrating part of it is all the waiting.

“You'll run tomorrow night and whatever the scenario is, then you've got five or six days to sit there and worry about what you've got to do,” said Stewart. “That's probably the hardest part is waiting to get back to the race track to actually do it.”

“There really is no mental way you can get around it,” added Kevin Harvick, the Sprint Cup points leader and Bowyer’s teammate at Richard Childress Racing. “You are in that position and it is tough on your mentally.”
Clint Bowyer (Pictured) leads Jamie McMurray by 100 points for the 12th and final Chase spot. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Harvick said that Bowyer and his squad need to make Sunday night’s Emory Healthcare 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway just another race and focus on business as usual.

“You have to just go out and do the things you know how to do as far as racing the car,” said Harvick. “The No. 33 (Bowyer) team in general has run well enough to be in the top-five in the points and has just had a lot of things go wrong. For them, it’s really just about going out and doing the things that they have been doing and hoping the bad luck goes away. That is really what it all boils down to because they have run well enough to be right up there where we are, it is just a matter of circumstances having dictated that for them.”

Easy to say, perhaps, but there is a lot on the line over the next two races.

“If you make the Chase, it’s a good season. If you don’t, that’s really bad,” said Carl Edwards, who is fourth in points. “There’s enough of a point spread that I would assume Mark and Jamie are just gonna go for it and hope for the best. But for Clint and those guys, a bad night here would be hugely stressful. ... the way Jamie and Mark have been running, anything can happen. They can run one-two and a couple guys could have trouble and it could be a whole different event in Richmond.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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