Charlotte, N.C. – The knock on NASCAR’s new championship format has always been that all the attention will go to the 10 drivers racing for the title, and the rest of the field will be overlooked.
Kasey Kahne and Robby Gordon changed that in the first of the 10 Chase races with acts of road rage. Kahne intentionally hit Kyle Busch and Gordon threw his helmet at Michael Waltrip, two instances that took the focus off the Chase drivers at New Hampshire International Speedway.
Their actions took the focus off winner Ryan Newman’s down-to-the wire battle with Tony Stewart and overshadowed Kurt Busch’s devastating 35th-place finish.
Greg Biffle, who is second in the Nextel Cup standings, wasn’t impressed.
“We looked like a circus. The NASCAR race at Loudon looked like a cheap wrestling match to me,” Biffle said. “I don’t think it was good for us. Drama and all that and excitement and who is going to beat who and seeing people’s real personality and people upset, that’s going to happen, but I think it was a little excessive.”
Still, it made for good television – something even traditionalist Mark Martin admits.
“My wife is a great indicator – she’s not the biggest fan in the world – but she said that was the greatest race she’d seen all year because of all that stuff,” said Martin, seventh in the Chase standings.
“Be real honest about it, the people love that stuff.”
But intentional wrecks and retaliation on the race track can be dangerous to everyone, as well as crippling to the 10 drivers in the Chase for the championship.
It happened to Jeremy Mayfield and Tony Stewart last year in New Hampshire, when Gordon wrecked Biffle as payback for contact earlier in the race. Mayfield and Stewart were caught in the melee, and it ended their championship hopes.
Neither recovered from those poor finishes to contend for the Nextel Cup title.
Although no Chase drivers were effected in Sunday’s road-rage incidents, the risk of getting wrecked by a backmarker will always be there for the title contenders.
Stewart, the current points leader, believes there is little that can be done to eliminate that element from the Chase.
“You still have 43 drivers who want to win races,” he said. “The guys who are outside of that top 10, they still have sponsors to impress, programs to get on track, and for some, jobs to earn. Other guys just have something to prove.”
Kurt Busch was the first Chase driver to fall victim to an accident when he wrecked with Scott Riggs just two laps into Sunday’s race. It dropped the reigning Nextel Cup champion to 10th in the Chase standings, with a huge hole to climb out of to win a second title.
Jimmie Johnson proved last season that one bad finish doesn’t eliminate a driver from the title. He fell 242 points behind Busch last season, then won four of the final six races to lose the championship by eight points.
And Busch also had to overcome a terrible race – he blew an engine in the sixth Chase event and finished 42nd, but still went on to win the title.
Still, he knows he has little room for error in the final nine events that begin Sunday in Dover, Del.
“We have to go and attack each race for a win,” Busch said. “We have to go to Dover and expect to win and try to build our points back up.”
That can be easier said than done.
Newman had a poor start to the Chase last season and never climbed higher than seventh in the standings. And Stewart and Mayfield – the two drivers caught in Robby Gordon’s mess last season – stalled out at sixth and 10th.
Mayfield is hoping to avoid a similar fate this season, and thinks NASCAR will do its part to prevent any more intentional accidents.
“I don’t see it getting any worse, because I’m sure at the drivers meeting this week we’re going to hear a pretty powerful voice tell us this isn’t going to continue on,” Mayfield said.
“We’re going to have races where everybody is going to get carried away … but I don’t see it getting too far out of hand.”
