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Nascar and Racing

Round 1: Chase Winners, Chase Losers

Posted Sep 15, 2008 6:46PM By Geoffrey Miller (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Greg Biffle, Chase for the Sprint Cup, Sprint Cup

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It's hard to believe it -- doesn't it feel like Ryan Newman won the season-opening Daytona 500 like a week ago? -- but the 2008 edition of the Chase for the Sprint Cup is now officially at full throttle following Sunday's first round of the ten race swing at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Unless you were living under a rock Sunday or perhaps digging out from Hurricane Ike, -- which, obviously, is a perfectly good excuse to miss the first race of the Chase -- Greg Biffle made a quiet, yet steady, statement that he's in no mood to be counted out of a championship run.

Naturally, Biffle's win Sunday at New Hampshire -- his first since Kansas in '07 -- will put him towards the top of the "Chase Winners" category because, well, you can't do a whole lot better than win a race (but I do give him props for the direct shot with the champagne spray in the picture. That takes talent!). The real importance of this post, though, is to summarize how the rest of the Chasers handled their first foray into the 2008 championship battle.

Did Kyle Busch -- who led the point standings nearly all year -- prove his worth? Was Clint Bowyer ready to take off his disguise of barely making the Chase (he finished third in the championship battle a year ago) and put on his "I'm here to play for keeps" hat? And what about Dale Earnhardt Jr.? Was he ready for his first Chase with Hendrick Motorsports?

It's all here, folks, so jump on in and find out who were your Chase Winners and Chase Losers following Sunday's first round at New Hampshire:



Round 1 Chase Winners

Greg Biffle (Finished 1st) - There's really not much more to say here than what you've already seen. Biffle won the event and put himself in position to make a run at his first championship. Actually, make that last line "put himself in GREAT position to a make a run at his first championship".

Jimmie Johnson (Finished 2nd) - Johnson seemed to have his third win in-a-row in the bag until Biffle got the better of him with about about ten laps to go. That second place finish, though? Good enough to put him in a tie for the Chase lead with our next guy on the list.

Carl Edwards (Finished 3rd) - No, Carl wasn't doing his victory backflip after Sunday's race in New England, but his third place finish has him toe to toe with Jimmie Johnson for the Chase lead. If nothing else, Edwards raced about as well as he needed to to find the right momentum early in the ten race stretch.

Jeff Burton (Finished 4th) - I called Burton a guy who was "Just In It" in the Calling the Chase feature from last week that previewed each Chase contender, but Burton made me look pretty dumb on Sunday. I gave Burton that outlook for the Chase because he is just so, so quiet when it comes to running well -- just like he did with his solid run on Sunday -- that he fooled me into seeing only an average season. He's now 50 points back of first in fifth place and ready to strike with stealthy precision.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. (Finished 5th) - I'd definitely put Earnhardt Jr. into the winner slot just for the reason that he finished in the Top-5 in his first Chase race under the Hendrick Motorsports banner. To me, that shows that he doesn't feel over-the-top pressure to succeed and watching him lead 79 laps early in the race before falling off on the handling in the middle stages of the race showed that he's not forcing the issue. Instead, the No. 88 is racing like it has all year long.

Tony Stewart (Finished 8th) - Stewart had karma come back and bite him on the you-know-what Sunday afternoon after he ripped his crew for inefficient work in the pits a week ago at Richmond, as he was penalized for going 50.3 miles per hour down the 45 m.p.h. pit road. It was purely a driver mistake and it cost him dearly by putting him a lap down under green flag conditions. With the tables even across the team now, Stewart rebounded and scored an impressive eighth-place finish.

Denny Hamlin (Finished 9th) - Hamlin lamented the fact that his car just doesn't seem to get the same type of gas mileage as his teammates (he did say that it very well could be his driving style) after having to pit late in the going of Sunday's race to avoid running out a fuel and losing costly points. For a team that likes to shoot from the hip and go for broke, it was a solid move that kept him in solid Chase contention.

Kevin Harvick (Finished 10th) - If there's a definite reason why Harvick makes the "winners" it's because he's finally allowed wife DeLana back at the track and in the pit after a few races of playing the superstition card with her not being there.

Round 1 Chase Losers

Clint Bowyer (Finished 12th) - Bowyer had the type of the day that barely got him into the Chase with his 12th-place run on Sunday, and that certainly isn't going to put him in contention for a championship come November. Frankly, I think a lot of people expected more out of the No. 07 car after he had a very fast piece according to the time sheets in the two practices on top of winning the race a year ago.

Jeff Gordon (Finished 14th) - A 14th-place run wasn't at all indicative of the race car that Jeff Gordon had on Sunday, but rather, it was just another tale in the rather lame season Gordon has been a part of in 2008. JG was eyeing a sure-bet Top 10 run until Patrick Carpentier spun in front of him late in the race. Gordon made an impressive swerve to miss him, but flat-spotted his left side tires and forced him to the end of the lead lap cars. He surged in the final laps to 14th but a finish like that won't win him a championship.

Kyle Busch (Finished 34th) - I think it's very easy to classify Busch as, by far, the biggest Chase loser of the weekend thanks to his broken sway bar early in the race. Call it karma or call it bad luck, but it seemed like only a matter of time until Busch & Co. truly fell off their high horse when it mattered. The biggest key for Busch now -- because he's certainly not out of contention -- is to show the mark of a true champion and rally back to the front.

Matt Kenseth (Finished 40th) - Kenseth likely wasn't expecting to finish the first race of the Chase in the same points position that he began it in (12th or last), but a wreck that was none of his own doing dug him a nice, deep whole for the remaining nine races. That 40th-place finish hurt, but the 177-point deficit was the fork in the chest for this Chase contender. Don't expect a huge rebound because even Matt isn't feeling one.

Tags: CarlEdwards, ChasefortheSprintCup, ClintBowyer, DaleEarnhardtJr., DennyHamlin, GregBiffle, JeffBurton, JeffGordon, JimmieJohnson, KevinHarvick, KyleBusch, MattKenseth, NewHampshireMotorSpeedway, SprintCup, Sylvania300, TonyStewart

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