10 Things to Watch in 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup Chase Championship at Homestead
So it comes down to this in the 2014 NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup: Kevin Harvick, Joey Logano, Denny Hamlin and Ryan Newman battling it out for the championship in a one-race, winner-takes-all season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
You may think you know everything about these guys and this potentially epic race, but you don't.
Harvick is fresh off a dominating must-win Game 7-type victory at Phoenix International Raceway. But will any of that momentum carry over at a track where he has never won?
Logano, with five victories overall this season and two in the Chase, during which his average finish has been a sparkling 5.3, should rank as a favorite. But does he? And if not, why not?
Hamlin is the defending race winner at Homestead and comes in with a FedEx truckload of confidence. Does he have the right to be this confident?
And Newman, the classic underdog who has made it this far without a single win on the season, appears to be a long shot at best. Or is it a mistake to think of him like that?
The answers to these questions and more lie directly ahead.
The Non-Chasers
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As the Chase field continued to be narrowed throughout the new elimination format, the field of accomplished non-Chasers hungry for a race win continued to grow.
You can now add Jeff Gordon and Brad Keselowski to the list after those two pre-Chase championship favorites were eliminated in Phoenix.
There really is no telling what these guys will do now—to each other or, by way of unintended collateral damage, possibly to one or more of the four drivers left contending for the title. Matt Kenseth is another who was eliminated from the Chase at Phoenix, has a score to settle with Keselowski and at the same time would love to earn his first win of the season.
Throw in other drivers such as rookie Kyle Larson, who has been so close to victory and has just this one more shot at earning a win in his inaugural Sprint Cup season, and you get the idea. Anything can happen.
Another factor to consider is the Hendrick Motorsports alignment with Stewart-Haas Racing, which fields the No. 4 Chevrolet driven by Harvick. Now that all four Hendrick cars are out of the title hunt, will they look to help Harvick? By the same token, what will Keselowski be willing to do to help Logano, his Team Penske teammate?
The non-Chasers could make the end of this Chase very interesting indeed.
The Underdog
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No one thinks Newman has much of a chance to finish ahead of the other three drivers left in the championship battle. But then again, no one really gave Newman much of a chance of advancing this far in the Chase either.
The fact of the matter is that it's true it will be very difficult for Newman to finish ahead of the entire trio of Harvick, Logano and Hamlin. It's happened only five times in the first 35 races this season, and all three of those drivers and their teams enter this one race more focused and better prepared than arguably at any time earlier in the season.
But you know what? It has happened, and that means it could possibly happen again.
If it does and yet Newman fails to win Sunday's race, the driver will become the first winless Cup champion in NASCAR's 65-year history. And while on one level that seems, well, just completely bogus and unappealing, on another it has added an element to this championship race that no one expected and should be fun to watch.
Tony Stewart's Pit Crew
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They began the season as Tony Stewart's pit crew. Now they are the crew for the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet driven by championship contender Kevin Harvick.
It's no coincidence that together they have formed the team that most consider the favorite to come out on top at Homestead.
Harvick's crew chief, Rodney Childers, said on a teleconference call with NASCAR media this week that the decision to switch crews with Stewart at the beginning of the Chase was a group one—and the right one with Stewart not qualifying for the Chase.
"It wasn't just, 'Hey, Kevin doesn't like his pit crew and he wants it changed,'" Childers said. "It wasn't that way at all. You know, it was what we all thought was the right thing to to do try to win a championship."
After numerous bobbles on pit road earlier this season, Harvick's new crew has been getting him on and off pit road especially efficiently and cleanly as the pressure has mounted late in the Chase. It will be interesting to see if this group goes back to pitting Stewart's No. 14 car next season, especially if Harvick wins the title with the crew's valuable assistance.
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Hamlin at Homestead-Miami Speedway
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Hamlin told Bleacher Report at the beginning of the Eliminator Round that he liked his chances of winning it all because of the tracks that were coming up down the stretch.
And he's especially confident going to Homestead now that he's one of the Championship Four. He has good reason for that, seeing as he's the defending race champion and is the only one of the final four drivers to win at the 1.5-mile track (he's done it twice, also winning there in 2009).
"Truth be told, if you asked me where I would like to run one race, heads-up for the championship, I would pick either Martinsville or Homestead," Hamlin said. "I would almost pick Homestead, because we've had a lot of success there over the last few years."
He's also had a couple runs there that were so-so at best in recent years, including a 24th-place finish in 2012 and 14th in 2010 when he spun early and lost the championship to Jimmie Johnson as a result. He knows he'll have to do better than that this time if he's going to win his first title.
The No. 22 Team's Inexperience
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Everyone seems to want to talk about the 24-year-old Logano's inexperience, and it's true that he's never experienced anything like this.
But Logano seems to be handling it quite well. When there was a problem disengaging the fuel can from his No. 22 Team Penske Ford on pit road last week at Phoenix and the ensuing penalty for carrying equipment from his pit box dropped him from second to 29th in the running order, it was Logano who seemed to be the calming influence on the team radio.
So maybe it's not Logano fans of the No. 22 group should be worried about. Maybe it's his pit crew. It's been solid virtually all year and during most of the Chase, but one screw-up like Phoenix at Homestead and Logano's shot at a championship is likely to fall by the wayside.
There's no way he finishes ahead of the other three drivers in the title hunt if something like that happens again. That would require all three of them to also mess up in some major manner as well, and that's just not likely to happen.
Luke Lambert
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If Newman does indeed win the title without winning a race, Lambert also would make history by becoming the first crew chief in NASCAR history to win a championship before winning his first Cup race.
This is his first season with Newman and only his second full season in Cup. A former engineer at Richard Childress Racing, Lambert, 32, steadily helped Newman coax better finishes out of the No. 31 Chevrolet as the season progressed.
But after five consecutive finishes of eighth or better in the Chase, Newman staggered into the Championship Four with a 15th at Texas and an 11th at Phoenix that he achieved only by laying a bumper to the car of rookie Kyle Larson on the final lap.
It almost certainly will take a finish much better than those to beat the other Championship Four drivers at Homestead, and it's on Lambert to try to find the speed in the car that making a run at that will take.
It will be a difficult task to say the least. Making matters more difficult for these guys is the fact that they are in the only one of the four remaining teams that did not use any of its allotted test days at Homestead this season.
Rodney Childers
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In his first season with driver Harvick at Stewart-Haas Racing, Childers has led the No. 4 Chevy team to four wins and six second-place finishes while leading a series-high 2,094 laps (or more than 500 more than anybody else).
Folks who really know racing aren't surprised.
After serving as David Reutimann's crew chief for three seasons, during which Childers helped the driver earn the first win in the history of Michael Waltrip Racing, Childers spent two years in a rather strange situation at MWR that only underscored his vast potential in the position.
After working with Reutimann, Childers spent the two seasons before this one as crew chief of a three-headed MWR team that featured drivers Mark Martin, Brian Vickers and Michael Waltrip splitting up the races.
It's difficult enough for a crew chief to develop chemistry and communication with one driver over the course of a season, let alone three. So Childers obviously has enjoyed working only with Harvick this season, even when Harvick frequently got upset earlier in the year because of repeated pit-road troubles for the No. 4 team.
Darian Grubb
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Grubb is the only one of the Championship Four crew chiefs to have won a title previously, having done so with Tony Stewart in 2011.
For his efforts then, Grubb was fired. Actually, Stewart later revealed that Grubb had been told he wouldn't be back for the 2012 season before the 2011 Chase even began. Even after Grubb led Stewart to five wins in 10 Chase races and the title, that didn't change.
So here we are again in 2014. Much of the season has been a struggle for Grubb and Denny Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 FedEx Toyota fielded by Joe Gibbs Racing. They've won only one race, and that came at Talladega Superspeedway when the field was frozen on a late caution after the white flag had flown.
Yet here they are, one of four teams now left battling for the championship. They also are defending race champions at Homestead, and guess what? Grubb might be in danger of losing his position once again, as JGR has been hinting at a shakeup of its crew chiefs for weeks now.
Asked about it recently, Hamlin told Jared Turner of Fox Sports nothing was set in stone for next year yet, adding: "I'm sure winning a championship with the team and stuff might have some bearing on some of those discussions and things, as well. We're going to wait until Monday after Homestead to even think about that stuff."
Todd Gordon
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Although a veteran crew chief in the Nationwide Series, Gordon, 45, is relatively new to the big leagues that the Cup Series represents.
He made his debut as a Cup crew chief only in 2012 with Team Penske, when he sat atop the pit box of the car that was driven by AJ Allmendinger and Sam Hornish Jr. But when he was teamed with Logano at the start of 2013, they soon began developing the kind of chemistry and in-race communication that breeds the consistency that used to guarantee championships.
And if this Chase was being run like the ones in the past, Logano would be a runaway winner with his two Chase wins and 5.3-average finish over the first nine races. But it isn't, and that means there is still work to be done.
Gordon said in a teleconference earlier in the week that the approach for him and his team to this winner-takes-all race is simple.
"I think you really have to approach this weekend like we did all of the races here building up to this race and continue to race aggressively," Gordon said. "The way the format is kind of laid out this year, you have to be aggressive to reap the rewards, and I think you're going to have to be close to being a winner to take home a championship here."
Kevin Harvick's Thirst for a Title
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Harvick is the hottest driver entering this final race, having won the last race at Phoenix in dominating fashion.
In 13 career starts at Homestead, he's never won. But he has finished second twice, and his average finish of 8.1 is the best of the four drivers battling for the title (Hamlin's is 11.2, Newman's 17.0 and Logano's 20.8).
More than all the numbers and the fact that Childers consistently has put the fastest race car in the series under him (see all those laps led over the season), there is a growing feeling in the Sprint Cup garage that Harvick, who will turn 39 in December, is the hungriest of the Championship Four when it comes to wanting to lay claim to his first Cup title.
In a discussion with FoxSports.com editors, Jeff Hammond, a former championship crew chief himself who now works as a NASCAR television analyst for Fox Sports, said: "As far as Harvick, they come in here holding the hot hand. And I think in Kevin and Rodney Childers, I see a driver and a crew chief who want it as badly as I've ever seen a driver and a crew chief want a championship."
Don't underestimate their ability to quench that thirst for a title.
Unless otherwise noted, all information was obtained firsthand.
Joe Menzer has written six books, including two about NASCAR, and now writes about it and other sports for Bleacher Report as well as covering NASCAR as a writer and editor for FoxSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @OneMenz.
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