NASCAR’s Chase for the Sprint Cup is starting to heat up after last week’s race in Kansas and there won’t be any relief from the heat this week as the NASCAR caravan heads into California for the Pepsi 500 at Auto Club Speedway. Not even race sponsor Pepsi will be able to provide the drivers in the Chase the kind of relief they need.
NASCAR’s Chase is heating up headed to Fontana
Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 14 Office Depot/Old Spice Chevrolet, climbs into his car during Friday's practice for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Pepsi 500 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif. Stewart qualified 20th for Sunday's race. (Photo Credit: Chris Graythen/Getty Images for NASCAR)
Tony Stewart was the one that turned up the heat last week by winning the race and closing the point gap on Mark Martin. In fact the race in Kansas was a pretty good one for most of the Chase contenders as 9 out of the top 10 spots were occupied by the Chasers with non-Chase driver David Reutimann being the only exception – he finished in 8th.
There are now seven drivers within a 103 points of Mark Martin where as at the start of the Kansas race there were only 3 drivers within 100 points of him and if Mark isn’t careful there could be more or worse yet a new point leader at the end of Sunday’s race.
Other than the closing up of the point spread in the standings the big story this week was the post-race impounding of the Rick Hendrick owned cars of Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin for further testing.
After the race in Dover the 48 and 5 cars of Johnson and Martin respectively were found to very close to being in violation of NASCAR’s height measurements and they were publicly warned about how close they were to being outside of the rules before the race in Kansas and after that race those cars were again taken by NASCAR for further testing.
And earlier this week NASCAR announced that the cars of Johnson and Martin were fine and were not as close to the limit as they were previously. Frankly speaking, Johnson and Martin have too much to lose by pushing the envelope so I can understand why the cars were prepared differently than before so that they were well within NASCAR’s measurement limits.
Martin now takes his slim 18 point lead into California and look for him to run well there, especially if it becomes a fuel mileage race.
Other drivers to watch for the win this weekend would be Johnson, Stewart, and Jeff Gordon.
Although I wouldn’t count out Greg Biffle who needs a win this year to keep his streak of at least one win a year since he first started racing Cup alive. You know Biffle’s pursuit of keeping this streak alive might just make him a factor in the Chase come Homestead. We will have to watch and see.
Another driver who might surprise you this weekend is Brian Vickers. I expect a big rebound from his terrible performance last week end. But the driver I’m going to be watching again this weekend is going to be Juan Montoya, he is doing everything right at the moment and if he continues to do so he just might get his first oval win this weekend and make everyone in the Chase stand up and take notice.
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