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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
JENSEN: The Plot Thickens
Tony Stewart is within 67 points of the NASCAR Sprint Cup points lead...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted October 05, 2009   Charlotte, NC
SPEED.com's Editor-in-Chief Tom Jensen. (Image: SPEED)

Tony Stewart’s victory in the Price Chopper 400 at Kansas Speedway was a sign that maybe, just maybe, this year’s Chase for the Sprint Cup won’t be a Hendrick Motorsports runaway after all.

And the fact that Greg Biffle looked so good in the first truly strong showing in what seemed like forever for Roush Fenway Racing was another optimistic indicator. So was the fact that Juan Pablo Montoya is hanging tough.

For his part, Stewart certainly is capable of putting together a white-hot streak of races from now until the end of the season. After all, he’s done it once already this season. From the first Dover race in May until the Brickyard 400, Stewart’s average finish was a fairly astonishing 3.125, and there’s nothing that says he couldn’t do it again in the Chase.

And let’s not for a minute underestimate the value of winning a race in the Chase. This year, the Chase champion almost certainly will be someone who wins a Chase race.

“We know we have to win to be able to win the Chase for the championship, and today was just a good example of how hard you have to fight and how close the competition is between all these guys,” said Stewart’s crew chief, Darian Grubb. “We swapped the lead tons of times today between all the actual competitors for the championship. You've got to be able to compete against those guys and race them and also race your race and just go for the wins. That's the only way you're going to be able to make up any ground.”

And make up ground Stewart certainly did on Sunday. He came into the race fifth in the standings, 106 points in arrears of leader Mark Martin and left just 67 back in fourth place. “It's the perfect scenario for us right now … in points,” said Stewart. “This team is going to have some momentum going in to California next week. These guys on the Office Depot/Old Spice team are doing a great job ,so we've got some momentum on our side now.”

Much already has been made about the fact that Hendrick’s dynamic duo of Martin and Johnson had off days at Kansas, which they did. Martin finished seventh and Johnson ninth, which is the worst result either driver has had in the three Chase races so far.

In truth, though, those results were hardly devastating. Martin actually widened his points lead from 10 to 18 over Johnson. Third-place Montoya is 51 points back, a slight improvement from 65 back over Dover. And while the point margins for the fourth- through eighth-place drivers all narrowed a little, no one other than Stewart gained more than 15 points on Martin.

Meanwhile, the guys in positions nine through 12 — Ryan Newman, Carl Edwards, Kasey Kahne and Brian Vickers — are all more than one full race back in terms of points. Stick a fork in their championship hopes. They’re done.

For what it’s worth, in four out of the five previous Chases, the points leader after Kansas went on to win the championship. The lone exception came in 2006, when Johnson made an amazing charge from eighth place to win his first of three consecutive championships.

But such a scenario is unlikely to happen this year, just as it didn’t happen in the other four editions of the Chase.

Certainly, if you told Martin before Kansas that he’d leave with a bigger lead than he came in with, he’d absolutely would have taken that scenario every time.

Johnson thinks the race is still wide open.

Asked after the race how he thought the remainder of the Chase would play out, Johnson was noncommittal.

“It is way too early to tell,” he said. “It is only three races in, the worst finish is ninth and we just don’t know what is going to happen. It is easy to let momentum build for someone or be against someone at this point. But, it is just way too early for myself to even start worrying about it … still a lot of racing left.”

Yes, there is. And while the threat of a Hendrick Motorsports runaway doesn’t seem quite as likely as did prior to Kansas, Martin and Johnson both are in good spots, so far.

At this point in the game, history shows it’s a lot better to be the ones being chased than the ones having to do the chasing. But this battle is just starting to warm up and get interesting, and with seven races to go, not much is settled yet.

And just like at Kansas, next week’s race in California is a lot more likely to knock out somebody who has a bad race than it is to determine who the next Sprint Cup champion will be.

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of ?Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED,? and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to



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