OBSERVATIONS Rick Minter's
Anybody's game

LESTER

This weekend's race at Richmond International Raceway, the final run before the start of the 10-race Chase for the Nextel Cup, likely won't be the nail-biter it has been in the past.

There won't be anyone moving from 14th position in points into the Chase with a dramatic race victory, as Jeremy Mayfield did in 2004. Only one driver outside the top 10, Kasey Kahne in 11th, has a chance of cracking into the elite group.

The drama this weekend will be centered around Kahne, who earned the maximum 190 points at California Speedway on Sunday by winning the race and leading the most laps.

If he continues his surge and makes up the 30 points he needs to get into the top 10, the big question becomes who will get knocked out. Mathematically, anyone from third-place Kevin Harvick to 10th-place Jeff Burton is vulnerable, and that group includes the sport's biggest stars - Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart.

Points leader Matt Kenseth and Jimmie Johnson, who is in second, are the only two drivers guaranteed berths in the 10race, season-ending run to the championship.

Absent from the Chase

There will be some familiar faces missing from the Chase for the Nextel Cup this year.

Three Roush Racing teams that made the Chase last year won't be back. Penske Racing won't have a representative, and Jeremy Mayfield, who made the cut the first two years, isn't even racing full-time in Cup.

Greg Biffle and Carl Edwards, who combined to win nine races last year and ended the season tied for second in the final standings (Biffle was awarded second based on having six victories to Edwards' three) have just one victory (Biffle at Darlington) between them. Both were mathematically eliminated from the Chase at California. Jamie McMurray, who took over the 2004 championship-winning team from Kurt Busch, is winless and hasn't been higher than 16th in points all season. He's now 17th.

At Penske, Ryan Newman, who never has finished worse than seventh in the final standings, has struggled all season and is 16th in points. His new teammate, Kurt Busch, a twotime Chase participant, is 14th.

Mayfield has been the biggest disappointment. An off-season crew swap at his Evernham Motorsports team wasn't to his liking, and he was fired after dropping out of the top 35 in owners' points.

Busch update

With his runner-up finish in the Ameriquest 300 Busch Series race at California Speedway, Kevin Harvick has pushed his points lead to 567 over Carl Edwards and is making a good case for some sort of playoff system for NASCAR's No. 2 series.

Harvick has dominated the Busch Series in nearly every aspect, leading the circuit with five victories, 17 top-five finishes and 24 top-10s. The only major category he doesn't lead is poles, where Denny Hamlin is tops with six.

While 10 drivers will participate in the Nextel Cup circuit's much-anticipated Chase playoff, there's little interest in the Busch Series title hunt. The top five positions are held by Nextel Cup regulars, but fifth-place J.J. Yeley is 836 points behind Harvick. Jason Leffler joined the top 10 at California, but he's a whopping 1,455 points out of the lead with eight races remaining.

Rough road

Bill Lester, the first African-American driver to compete in a Nextel Cup race in 20 years, failed to qualify at California Speedway last week and finds himself in a critical position in his career. That's bad news for NASCAR's diversity effort.

Lester, a full-time Craftsman Truck Series driver for the past five seasons, has made two Cup starts this year, at Atlanta and Michigan, but doesn't have a plan in place for next season for the Cup or truck circuit.

"It would certainly be great to have a program for 2007 finalized at this point, but that is simply not the case," Lester said in a team news release. "We have been very fortunate so far this year with Waste Management's sponsorship and Bill Davis the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series races, and Racing's support in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series races, and in our NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series program with BDR and Toyota, but we are still actively pursuing the right combination that will allow me to compete in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series in 2007.

"At the moment, it is still up in the air."

He said he feels it's important for NASCAR's future growth to have a diverse field of drivers.

"The fact is that many new fans will appear when someone like me is racing week in and week out," he said. "There may be younger minority drivers in the development pipeline somewhere, but I am here now and I'd like to stay for a while. At this point in time, to really consider the process a success, I need to be able to secure the support to race at the Nextel Cup level on a permanent basis."