NASCAR - Chase For The Cup 2011

JRS

JRS

JRS

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So, Richmond is dealt with and the 12 drivers for the 10-race Chase For The Cup have been decided. These are the top 10 drivers from the regular season, and 2 wild-card entries who have the most wins out of everyone else.


  1. Kyle Busch
  2. Kevin Harvick
  3. Jeff Gordon
  4. Matt Kenseth
  5. Braindead Moron™
  6. Jimmie Johnson
  7. Kurt Busch
  8. Ryan Newman
  9. Tony Stewart
  10. Dale Earnhardt Jr.
  11. Brad Keselowski
  12. Denny Hamlin
Some thoughts:

Dale Earnhardt Jr. - makes the chase for the first time since '08. And made it in despite having a car that was utterly trashed in the Richmond race....his crew chief (Steve Letarte) must have been doing some serious cheerleading.

Denny Hamlin - fought for the title last year, needed a wild-card for the Chase this year. He'll be hoping for a better Chase than his regular season has been.

Tony Stewart - 7th time in the Chase for Smoke. He had a calm, measured drive at Richmond....pretty much the polar opposite of Junebug's night!

Brad Keselowski - I think this guy is going to be a contender for the title. I mean, I'm sure JJ will win it....but Brad could really run well.


...



I know I say that Jimmie Johnson will win it....but it might be Jeff Gordon. He's had a really good run, and is going into the Chase off the back of a third place, a win, and another third in the last three races. And Jimmie does keep getting into trouble with Kurt Busch. And then I think that maybe it's time for Kyle Busch to convert all that promise and all that talent into a title. Hell, as long as the Braindead Moron™ doesn't get it I'm pretty much going to be okay with this season.

First race in the Chase is at Chicagoland Speedway next weekend. Not my favourite track in the calendar - it's a 1.5 mile D-oval 'cookie-cutter' track, a TilkeDrome of the NASCAR world. But later in the Chase they'll be going to some better tracks - Loudon, Dover, Talladega, Charlotte, Martinsville and the recently revamped Phoenix. Can't wait to see Phoenix in particular, hoping they haven't dialled all of the character out of the place!
 
Ok, I've heard this whole 'chase' thing talked about a lot. How does it actually work? Is there just 10 more races with just these 12 in it, or are they races with a full field but with this 12 in a separate sub championship?
 
The final ten races of the 36 race season make up the Chase. The full field still race, and all still race for points. But the top 12 drivers going into the final ten races are the only ones who can go for the title.
 
So, if the 12 in the chase all have terrible races, could you theoretically have the winner of the cup not end the season at the top of the points?
 
Skeeter said:
So, if the 12 in the chase all have terrible races, could you theoretically have the winner of the cup not end the season at the top of the points?
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No, because going into the Chase the top 12 all have their points bumped up well beyond the rest of the field.

The top 12 start the Chase on 2000 points. The top 10 get 3 additional bonus points for every win they took in the regular season. Thus Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick start the Chase on 2012 points, Jeff Gordon on 2009, Matt Kenseth on 2006, Braindead Moron™ on 2003 and so on. The two wild-card drivers don't get a bonus.
 
I don't see this as being Junebug's year. His last win was at Michigan in '08, and he's had a fairly poor run of results lately. I'd love him to do well, I really would. But I just don't see him as a contender for the title.

I'll post up the race info nearer the weekend. Hopefully none of the Chase races get delayed as much as Atlanta a week or so ago when they ended up having to run the race on the Tuesday!
 
Chase Preview: The Six Favourites To Beat Johnson

(courtesy of NASCAR.com)

Jimmie Johnson is a realist -- he knows, sooner or later, another driver will end his streak of consecutive Sprint Cup championships that reached five with his 2010 title run.

"I have a lot invested in this, and I'd love to see the streak stay alive," Johnson said, "but at the same time, I've won five, and at some point we're going to lose one."

Don't read that as a concession speech. Johnson is just as committed to winning a sixth championship as he was to winning his first in 2006.

"I know I'm going to work and give 100 percent -- and this team is -- and it is what it is," Johnson said.

Johnson is at his best in the Chase, NASCAR's playoff. He and crew chief Chad Knaus have mastered the process of pacing themselves during the first 26 races and peaking for the final 10 that decide the title. If another driver is to end Johnson's streak, he and his team will have to be even better.

Here are the six favorites who could stop Johnson's drive for six championships.
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Kurt Busch

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Sponsor - Shell/Pennzoil
Manufacturer - Dodge
Car Owner - Walter Czarnecki
Team - Penske Racing
Crew Chief - Steve Addington

2011 Season:

Wins - 1
Top 5s - 7
Top 10s - 14
Avg. finish - 12.9

There's no one in the Sprint Cup garage who would like to dethrone Johnson more than Busch, who has adopted the slogan "Anybody but the 48" as his Chase mantra.

Busch and Johnson have had issues in the past, most recently over the weekend in Richmond. Busch, who won the title in 2004, is the only driver other than 2005 champ Tony Stewart and Johnson to have won a championship under the Chase format -- in what can rightfully be called the Johnson Era.

Because there's a rivalry between Busch and Johnson, however, doesn't mean Busch hasn't observed the methodology Johnson and Knaus have adopted in fashioning their five consecutive championship runs.

"You just have to be good in all areas, like they have been," Busch said. "You need to be an A-plus. When Chad sees things that aren't an A-plus, he makes big changes. That's where the rest of us need to be there with 'em. So it's engine department, chassis, aero -- you have to have it all."

That Busch is in position to fight for a championship represents both a dramatic turnaround and a vindication. Early in the season, when the Penske Racing Dodges weren't handling to his liking, Busch called out team engineer Tom German on the team radio and questioned the direction German had established for the setups of his cars.

Shortly thereafter, German departed to pursue an advanced degree at MIT, and -- coincidence or not -- the performance of the Penske cars improved markedly, enough to solidify Busch's position in the Chase and to provide a coattail effect for teammate Brad Keselowski, who picked up three wins and made the Chase for the first time.

Busch also has observed Johnson's road map over the last 10 races of his five championship seasons. Johnson has won 19 of the 70 Chase races -- at least one each year since the inception of the format. Busch believes a combination of consistent performance and wins is the path to a title.

"I don't think you have to win often," Busch said, "but you do have to win."

Where Busch will be strong: New Hampshire, Kansas, Homestead

Where Busch will struggle: Martinsville
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Kyle Busch

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Sponsor - Wrigley's Doublemint
Manufacturer - Toyota
Car Owner - Joe Gibbs
Team - Joe Gibbs Racing
Crew Chief - Dave Rogers

2011 Season:

Wins - 4
Top 5s - 13
Top 10s - 16
Avg. Finish - 10.9

This Chase will be different for Busch, who has been much more successful in proving Murphy's Law than in winning a Cup championship.

Emblematic of that was 2008, when Busch won eight of the first 22 races, entered the Chase as the top seed and promptly saw his title hopes trashed by a succession of mechanical failures.

Married on New Year's Eve and having developed a trust with crew chief Dave Rogers, Busch brings a newfound maturity and an evenhanded approach to this Chase -- an outlook that makes him a serious threat to unseat Johnson.

"He should have gotten married two years ago," Joe Gibbs Racing president J.D. Gibbs quipped last month at Michigan after Busch's fourth win of the season.

Mistakes have haunted Busch in the past. Mistakes are precisely what he plans to avoid this year.

"The biggest thing is just being able to stay competitive through the final 10 races," Busch said. "Even the Talladega race -- you're going to try as hard as you can to stay out of trouble and at least get through there with a top-10.

"You can't have motor issues, you can't have pit stop issues, you can't have sway bar arms falling off -- everything that I've ever had in the Chase."

Getting off to a strong start in the Chase will be critical. For the first time since its inception in 2004, the 10-race playoff will start somewhere other than New Hampshire. This year it opens at Chicagoland, a track where Busch has a win and a third in six starts but has finished 17th and 33rd in his past two races.

If Busch can get through Chicagoland and New Hampshire the following week in good shape -- and can avoid trouble at Talladega -- he'll be in a strong position to battle for the championship. As is the case with Johnson, the balance of the schedule plays to Busch's strengths.

Where Busch will be strong: Dover, Martinsville, Phoenix

Where Busch will struggle: New Hampshire, Talladega
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Braindead Moron™

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Sponsor - Aflac
Manufacturer - Ford
Car Owner - Jack Roush
Team - Roush Fenway Racing
Crew Chief - Bob Osbourne

2011 Season:

Wins - 1
Top 5s - 12
Top 10s - 17
Avg. finish - 11.0

Throughout 2011, Edwards has dominated the headlines -- but not, by and large, because of his performance on the race track. That performance, mind you, has been excellent. Edwards had held or shared the points lead after 16 of 22 races until his car had electrical-system issues in August at Michigan.

Nevertheless, Edwards made more news for his protracted contract negotiations. Joe Gibbs Racing made a powerful pitch to lure Edwards from Roush Fenway Racing, but Edwards opted to stay put.

Though he forgoes the services of an agent and negotiates the minutiae of his contracts himself, he was able to keep his racing and his business life in separate compartments -- at least to the extent that he could field offers on the one hand and still drive with his usual controlled aggression on the other.

"This sport has so many different variables and so many different things going on that I think anybody who's successful in this sport has to be able to put everything else aside when they get in the race car and focus on racing," Edwards said. "I don't feel like I'm any better than anyone else at that, but it's something that you have to learn to do.

"For me, it takes about all I've got mentally to do it, and while I'm in that race car, that's all I think about -- and it's really fun."

That focus will help Edwards as he tries to unseat Johnson. Edwards also has something else on his side that he didn't have until the end of last season -- raw speed. Midway through the 2010 campaign, RFR corrected problems with its computer simulations and began to improve the handling of the organization's cars. Edwards won the final two races.

"I feel like we've shown this year that we can lead the points," Edwards said. "I feel like our team is strong, and we're able to apply our experiences. And really, we're just faster. We're faster this year than we have been for a long time."

Where Edwards will be strong: Dover, Kansas, Texas, Phoenix, Homestead

Where Edwards will struggle: New Hampshire, Martinsville
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Jeff Gordon

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Sponsor - DuPont
Manufacturer - Chevrolet
Car Owner - Rick Hendrick
Team - Hendrick Motorsports
Crew Chief - Alan Gustafson

2011 Season:

Wins - 3
Top 5s - 10
Top 10s - 14
Avg. finish - 11.6

If old people can't drive, they certainly can't race.

If Gordon wins the championship this year, he will be the first driver on the wrong side of 40 to do so since Dale Jarrett in 1999. In NASCAR's modern era, only Jarrett, Dale Earnhardt, Bobby Allison and Richard Petty have won championships in their fifth decades.

Recently, the sport has been dominated by young drivers, many of whom are where they are largely because of the path Gordon blazed in the 1990s.

But that's ancient history. What about the present -- can Gordon end his nine-year title drought, win championship No. 5 and thereby restake his claim as one of the best ever, alongside Petty, Earnhardt and now his (no longer young) protege Johnson?

If Gordon races like he did in the first 12 races of the season, no. If he races like he has since then, yes.

Gordon started to turn his season around after a terrible performance at Texas. In that race, his car was so bad that crew chief Alan Gustafson revamped the way he set up future cars for Gordon. The new approach has worked. Gordon finished 23rd at Texas and has finished worse than 20th only once since, and that was because of a crash at Richmond in April.

From race No. 13 on, Gordon has produced championship-caliber results. When Gordon has a fast car, the results show it, and Gustafson has been building consistently fast cars. Gustafson is considered one of the best crew chiefs in the garage. The more he and Gordon work together, the better they get. Even in their first year together, they appear comfortable enough to be title contenders. "Every week I go into those debriefs and come away thinking that we're going to wear them out this weekend," Gordon said.

That's how Gordon did it in the good old days, and he has shown flashes of it again this season. The key for him will be whether he can keep it up for the full 10 races in the Chase. That's a long time to sustain excellence at any age.

Where Gordon will be strong: Chicagoland, Kansas, Martinsville, Phoenix

Where Gordon will struggle: Charlotte, Texas
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Kevin Harvick

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Sponsor - Budweiser
Manufacturer - Chevrolet
Car Owner - Richard Childress
Team - Richard Childress Racing
Crew Chief - Gil Martin

2011 Season:

Wins - 4
Top 5s - 7
Top 10s - 13
Avg. finish - 11.6

To win the Chase, Harvick needs one thing.

It's not a fast car; he already has one of those. He has four wins this season and has finished on the lead lap in 22 of 26 races, which means he has the speed to run up front and the consistency to avoid bad finishes, both of which are mandatory in the Chase.

It's not a solid crew chief, a fast pit crew or ample driving skill -- he has all of those, too. Harvick doesn't have a weak spot; he's good on flat tracks, short tracks, intermediate tracks and restrictor-plate tracks (especially restrictor-plate tracks). The track he despises most is Charlotte, and he won there in the spring. He says his No. 29 team is stout top to bottom and will win or lose the championship based solely on performance.

So if it's not a fast car or a solid crew chief or a fast pit crew or ample driving skill, what does he need?

Controversy.

He needs to pick a fight, cause a wreck, point out the unworthiness of some other driver's mother. He has said it many times: He thrives on controversy.

It seems to focus his concentration. Anger, even if it's manufactured, makes him get up on the wheel a little bit more. At Darlington this year, he reached into Kyle Busch's car to try to sock him one. Harvick was fined and placed on probation by NASCAR, which has roughly the same effect as you putting him on probation. Except for this: In the next four races, Harvick finished 10th, first, 11th and fifth.

Kyle Busch was his target this season (and last), but Busch is hardly the only one to battle with Harvick. He has criticized or feuded with drivers up and down the standings. He called Carl Edwards a pansy, tried to choke Greg Biffle, got in a shoving match with Juan Montoya, called Kurt Busch a "cocky, arrogant punk," and on and on.

Where Harvick will be strong: Chicagoland, Talladega, Homestead

Where Harvick will struggle: Dover, Charlotte
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Matt Kenseth

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Sponsor - Crown Royal
Manufacturer - Ford
Car Owner - John Henry
Team - Roush Fenway Racing
Crew Chief - Jimmy Fennig

2011 Season:

Wins - 2
Top 5s - 7
Top 10s - 14
Avg. finish - 11.9

A Kenseth championship would bring NASCAR full circle. NASCAR started the Chase format in response to Kenseth's championship in 2003, when he won one race but captured the title because nobody else could do better than his 10.2 average finish.

Kenseth's Roush Fenway Racing cars should be fast enough for him to stay in the hunt this time around. He's so steady at the wheel that he'll never overdrive them or take unnecessary risks. The Chase rewards consistency and punishes poor finishes. Kenseth will avoid poor finishes. But the consistency has to be better consistency than he has mustered so far. He needs to string together top-fives, not top-10s.

"You always want to do better and improve," Kenseth said. "You want to be on your game the last 10 races when it really counts, but overall, it has been a good season for us."

If he's on his game in those last 10 races, it will become a great season and you probably won't even realize it until the end. If Kenseth beats Johnson, here's how it will go: Kenseth will be in the middle of the pack for seemingly the whole Chase. His cars will be good but not great. He will hit his marks time after time, lap after lap, but he will never make a spectacular save or barrel his way to a win (which is not to say he won't win a race). Finally, when the Chase nears its end -- poof, there he will be, out of nowhere. That's how he runs races, that's how he runs seasons, that's how he does everything.

Where Kenseth will be strong: Chicagoland, Dover, Charlotte, Texas

Where Kenseth will struggle: Kansas, Talladega, Homestead
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Chase Preview: The Rest Of The Chasers

(courtesy of NASCAR.com)

Jimmie Johnson

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Sponsor - Lowe's/ Kobalt Tools
Manufacturer - Chevrolet
Car Owner - Jeff Gordon
Team - Hendrick Motorsports
Crew Chief - Chad Knaus

2011 Season:

Wins - 1
Top 5s - 11
Top 10s - 17
Avg. finish - 10.6

The winning formula for five consecutive championships is easy to articulate. The execution is another matter. Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus know how to peak for the final 10 races, win enough of them to build an edge (Johnson has won a mind-blowing 19 of the 70 Chase races) and shrug off even the most disastrous of setbacks (witness the rally from a 39th-place finish at New Hampshire in the No. 48 team's 2006 championship season). Until someone else comes up with a better game plan - and pulls it off - Johnson is the champ.
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Ryan Newman

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Sponsor - U.S. Army Medicine
Manufacturer - Chevrolet
Car Owner - Tony Stewart
Team - Stewart-Haas Racing
Crew Chief - Tony Gibson

2011 Season:

Wins - 1
Top 5s - 8
Top 10s - 13
Avg. finish - 13.1

Talk about a guy who has run below the radar. Newman has outperformed his owner-teammate, two time champion Stewart, this year, but he's not near the top of anyone's list of Chase favorites. In the nine races since July's Coke Zero 400 at Daytona, Newman has notched six finishes in the top eight, including a win at New Hampshire. History has shown, however, that you can't simply top 10 the opposition to death in the Chase. Odds are the champion will have to win at least twice in the final 10, and to do that, Newman and the No. 39 team will have to ratchet up their performance.
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Tony Stewart

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Sponsor - Office Depot/ Mobil 1
Manufacturer - Chevrolet
Car Owner - Margaret Haas
Team - Stewart-Haas Racing
Crew Chief - Darian Grubb

2011 Season:

Wins - 0
Top 5s - 3
Top 10s - 11
Avg. finish - 14.2

The 2002 and 2005 champ enters the Chase winless, and that's not a good omen. Typically, drivers who haven't won all season don't start ripping off victories in the Chase. On the positive side, Stewart had afterburners on his car in the Labor Day weekend race at Atlanta, coming from nowhere in the closing laps to finish third. Atlanta is an intermediate speedway, and though it drives differently from most other cookie-cutter tracks, there are five such speedways in the Chase. In fact, the Chase starts at a downforce track for the first time -- Chicagoland, where Stewart has two wins and seven top-fives in 10 starts. There's a lot to be said for getting off on the right foot.
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Dale Earnhardt Jr.

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Sponsor - Amp Energy/ National Guard
Manufacturer - Chevrolet
Car Owner - Rick Hendrick
Team - Hendrick Motorsports
Crew Chief - Steve Letarte

2011 Season:

Wins - 0
Top 5s - 3
Top 10s - 9
Avg. finish - 14.3

Earnhardt made the Chase the old-fashioned way. He earned it, by banking enough points to withstand an assault from Keselowski in the regular-season finale at Richmond. With new crew chief Steve Letarte on the pit box, Earnhardt accomplished his No. 1 goal of getting back into the Chase for the first time since 2008, his first year at Hendrick Motorsports. Letarte has indicated his setups were deliberately conservative when Earnhardt was protecting his position in the past few races before the Chase. The question is, can Earnhardt and the No. 88 team get the job done when they adopt a more aggressive approach for the final 10 races.
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Brad Keselowski

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Sponsor - Miller Lite
Manufacturer - Dodge
Car Owner - Roger Penske
Team - Penske Racing
Crew Chief - Paul Wolfe

2011 Season:

Wins - 3
Top 5s - 6
Top 10s - 10
Avg. Finish - 15.6

In the final six weeks of the regular season, no driver was hotter than Keselowski, who broke his left ankle Aug. 3 during a test session at Road Atlanta and won at Pocono four days later to propel himself into the Chase conversation. Keselowski followed with a runner-up finish at Watkins Glen, a third at Michigan and a victory at Bristol that, for practical purposes, locked up the first Chase appearance for the 27-year-old. The question for Keselowski is not whether he can amp up his performance in the Chase but whether he can sustain what he's already doing.
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Denny Hamlin

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Sponsor - FedEx Ground
Manufacturer - Toyota
Car Owner - J D Gibbs
Team - Joe Gibbs Racing
Crew Chief - Mike Ford

2011 Season:

Wins - 1
Top 5s - 4
Top 10s - 10
Avg. Finish - 16.1

A hard wreck on Lap 8 of 400 typically isn't a confidence builder, but that may be just what proves to Hamlin and his team that they still have the mettle to contend. With his Chase hopes in the balance last Saturday at Richmond, Hamlin was a victim of a 15-car pileup in Turn 3, eight laps into the race. He lost a lap to the field, but -- somehow -- his crew repaired his heavily damaged car and made it not only functional but fast. Hamlin's near-miraculous ninth-place finish sealed a place in the Chase, but, more than that, it did wonders for the morale of a team that let a title slip away last year. As a wild-card qualifier, Hamlin is fighting long odds this year, but if he doesn't win the championship, it won't be from lack of effort.
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The line-up for the first Chase race later, if anyone cares :) No mahoosive shocks, though Josh Wise making it into the race was a mild surprise. His last Cup race attempt was at Martinsville in '09, where he DNQ'd. He just scraped onto the starting line-up for today by beating Travis Kvapil. A whopping 0.004sec in it!

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They got going today. Up to about lap 70 now.

Current Chase positions if the race ended like this:

1) Kyle Busch (--)
2) Kurt Busch (+5 spots)
3) Matt Kenseth (+1)
4) Kevin Harvick (-2)
5) Ryan Newman (+3)
6) Braindead Moron™ (-1)
7) Jimmie Johnson (-1)
8) Jeff Gordon (-5)
9) Brad Keselowski (+2)
10) Dale Earnhardt Jr. (--)
11) Tony Stewart (-2)
12) Denny Hamilin (--)

***edit***

Whoops, just as I type this. Debris Caution, also known as Race Lead Reset Button Of Ultimate Justice™....that completely tears up the order I just posted! :D
 
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Right, as it turned out....

Smoke won! Harvick (Earnhardt Sr's replacement at Childress) got second. And Junebug was third. 7 Chevrolets in the top 10.

Chasers who didn't do too well in the end - Kyle Busch down in 22nd, Jeff Gordon in 24th (he spent all day down there, in fact) and Denny Hamlin in 31st. They will be hoping and praying for a better day in New Hampshire when the series goes to Loudon next weekend.
 
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