NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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JENSEN: Boys Still Having At It
The top eight Chase drivers have already distanced themselves from the bottom four...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted September 27, 2010   Charlotte, NC
SPEED.com's Editor-in-Chief Tom Jensen. (Image: SPEED)
Two races into the 2010 edition of the Chase for the Sprint Cup, and already all hell has broken loose.

• Clint Bowyer breaks an 88-race winless streak with an upset victory in New Hampshire.

• Bowyer’s car flunks post-race inspection, earning him a 150-point penalty from NASCAR.

• Bowyer and team owner Richard Childress launch into an angry war of words against the penalty.

• Denny Hamlin claims that everyone in the garage knew the RCR cars were cheated up and had been for months.

• RCR’s Kevin Harvick shows his displeasure by running into Hamlin at least three different times during practice at Dover International Speedway Saturday morning. A near fight ensues in the garage between the No. 11 crew and the No. 29 crew.

• Despite a couple of dicey pit stops, Jimmie Johnson wins at Dover, his sixth victory of the 2010 season and his 19th win in 62 Chase races dating back to 2004.

• Hamlin leaves Dover with a 35-point lead over Johnson.

If all of that’s happened just in the first two Chase races, who knows what kind of mayhem lies ahead over the next eight weeks?

As always happens this time of year, mistakes define the championship hunt. That much was obvious by some of the rumblin’, bumblin’ and stumblin’ witnessed at the Monster Mile. It comes as no coincidence that the bottom five drivers in the top 12 of the Sprint Cup points standings all had big troubles Sunday at Dover.

• Eighth-place Jeff Gordon lost five spots on the track late in the race, thanks to a 17.7-second pit stop by his normally dependable Hendrick Motorsports crew.

• Ninth-place Greg Biffle got bitten because he pitted just a couple of laps before a caution flag came out and fell off the lead lap.

• Tenth-place Tony Stewart was busted for speeding on pit road, which dropped him off the lead lap.

• Eleventh-place Matt Kenseth blew a tire trying to brake for pit road.

• Twelfth-place Bowyer was also caught speeding on pit road, not once, but twice, which pretty much meant he went from hero to zero in the span of one race. You’ll have that in big-time auto racing.

So where do we stand after two races? There are two groups of Chasers: Hamlin, Johnson (-35 points), Kyle Busch (-45), Kurt Busch (-59), Harvick (-65), Carl Edwards (-73), Jeff Burton (-80) and Jeff Gordon (-83) are still very much in contention.

On the other hand, Biffle (-140), Stewart (-162), Kenseth (-165) and Bowyer (-235) already are in deep trouble. The most points a driver can make up in a single race is 161, so the bottom three are already more than one full race behind.
Denny Hamlin remains the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series points leader. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

History isn’t working in their favor, either: Johnson won the 2006 title after coming from 136 points back following the Dover race. The next biggest margin? In ’05, Stewart was 23 points behind after Dover and went on to win the title.

I’m going to go out on a limb and make a prediction here: Next weekend, when the Sprint Cup circus hits Kansas City, most of the drivers in the Chase will insist that the title is still wide open and it’s too early to tell who the champion will be, etc.

All of which, to some degree, is true. That said, if I were a betting man, I would say there’s about a 90 percent certainty that the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup champion will be either Hamlin, Johnson or Kyle Busch, the top three drivers right now.

And about a 99 percent chance that the champ will come from the top six right now.

A couple of final thoughts on the weekend:

NASCAR is still considering the idea of eliminating drivers as the Chase goes on next year, sort of like the NHRA does with its “Countdown to 1” playoff system.

The truth is, right now drivers already eliminate themselves through poor finishes. They don’t get booted out of the Chase, but by the midpoint of the 10-race Chase, at least half the field will be too far back to compete.

On another topic entirely, I spent three days in Las Vegas last week at the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Event, one of the most fun things a car nut can do. This is an absolute must-see event, a bucket-list show for car lovers. Kudos to Barrett-Jackson for staging another stellar event.

Have at it, boys (and girls). There’s a lot of fun still to be had this year.

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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