RSS Feed
|
|
|||||
|
Rick Minter's OBSERVATIONS
Childress went to Victory Lane anyway, with his No. 31 Chevy and driver Jeff Burton, who broke a 175-race winless streak with his Dover win. Burton also took the points lead from Harvick, who dropped to fifth, 54 points behind his teammate. Between the two drivers, Childress has three consecutive Cup victories and holds two of the top five positions in the Chase with eight races to go. The latest victory also was an exoneration of sorts for Childress' teams after unsubstantiated news reports claimed that Harvick's win at New Hampshire was aided by trick wheels. NASCAR and Childress both said the reports were false. Out early It takes strong, steady performances in 26 races to make the cut for the Chase for the Nextel Cup, but it takes only one or two bad runs in the 10-race Chase to be eliminated from title contention. Kyle Busch is a perfect example. He started the Chase in fourth place, but two consecutive poor finishes essentially have taken him out of the running. After a blown engine at Dover relegated him to a 40thplace finish, Busch conceded that he'll have to wait another year to win a championship. He's 10th in the standings, 224 points out of the lead. "We're done," he said. Kasey Kahne crashed early in the Dover 400 and finished 38th. Like Busch, he figures he's too far back to make a run at the championship. He's ninth in the standings, 182 points behind leader Jeff Burton. "No more championship," Kahne told reporters. "We all thought we had a shot to win the Nextel Cup, but you can't have two rough weeks, I don't think.We're going to come back next week at Kansas and do everything possible to win the race. "I think we'd have to win the final eight to win the Cup," he said. The Busch title Kevin Harvick lost the Nextel Cup points lead at Dover, but he's all but assured of at least one major NASCAR championship this year. He's competing full time in the Busch and Nextel Cup series and heads to Kansas with a nearly insurmountable 699-point lead over Carl Edwards in the Busch standings. Harvick, who has six wins, 19 top-five and 26 top-10 finishes already, could skip three of the final six Busch races and still hold the points lead. But don't look for a repeat performance. Harvick has said he'd like to run just a partial Busch schedule next year. Toyota update With Toyota set to begin competing in Nextel Cup next season, many fans and garage insiders are wondering how the sport's first foreign nameplate will fare. Based on Toyota's results in the Craftsman Truck Series this season, the Japanese cars soon will be dominant. Mike Skinner's victory at Las Vegas on Saturday was Toyota's 10th in 19 races this year. Ford is second with six, four by Cup veteran Mark Martin. Chevrolet has three victories, while Dodge is winless. Toyota drivers also are dominating the points standings, holding the top four positions. Todd Bodine leads the standings over Johnny Benson, David Reutimann and Ted Musgrave. Experience counts It seems that even the great ones have to pay their dues when coming to NASCAR. Juan Pablo Montoya, who is leaving the elite Formula One circuit to race stock cars for Chip Ganassi, was expected to get his first real experience in a NASCAR-type vehicle during an ARCA test at Talladega Superspeedway this week. ARCA is a Midwest-based circuit that competes on a variety of tracks, from paved superspeedways like Daytona and Talladega to dirt ovals at fairgrounds in the Midwest. Ganassi, Montoya's team owner, told reporters on Sunday that he's just trying to get Montoya as much experience as possible before next year, and that might include a Nextel Cup race. "We want to get him in as many races as we can the rest of the year, and if that's ARCA, Busch or Cup, it really doesn't matter," he said. "Whatever presents itself at the time, we're going to go after it.We're going to take it one step at a time, and if the learning curve is there, yeah, if everything goes good, I don't see why not [entering a Cup race this season]." |
for larger version       |
||||
