Biggest NASCAR Storylines After the Chase for the Sprint Cup Challenger Round
Time out!*
Mark-Paul Gosselaar, better known as Saved By The Bell’s Zack Morris, will grand marshal the second race of the Contender Round of the Chase at Kansas Speedway: the Hollywood Casino 400.
But before that, Charlotte Motor Speedway plays host to the round opener in the Bank of America 500.
Conspicuously absent from Sprint Cup contention is six-time champ Jimmie Johnson. He’s a 10-time winner at Dover International Speedway, the site of the Challenger Round’s elimination race, so failing to gain access to the Contender Round is especially gnawing for the No. 48 team.
And after Kevin Harvick’s emphatic do-or-die win in the AAA 400 at Dover, he went from the fringe of contention to one of the favorites and the threat to make Joe Gibbs wish he was coaching football this time of year.
As we enter the next wave of races at Charlotte, Kansas and—gulp—Talladega, the grip on the wheel will only tighten from here. Read on for some contender-seasoned storylines.
*: This is a reference anyone born between 1979-1985 will understand.
The No. 48 Team Goes Three and out
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Strip that yellow off the splitter and spoiler.
Winning four races in the regular season made Johnson’s bid for a seventh Sprint Cup feel, in some ways, inevitable. At the very least, the Contender Round seemed a guarantee given that the previous round contained Dover, a track where Johnson has won an astounding 10 times.
So Johnson headlines the drivers eliminated after the first round, a quartet that includes the valiant Jamie McMurray and the predictably mediocre Paul Menard and Clint Bowyer.
A broken rear axle seal means Johnson now races for posterity, for sponsors and, as nauseating as this must sound to him, for fun.
"As I worry about things, I worry about a flat, I worry about a pit call, I worry about hard racing, something going on—I don't worry about an axle seal failing," Johnson said in Jessica Ruffin’s NASCAR.com story. "It's just not on your radar. You just take things for granted. There's so many parts and pieces on these cars and you take for granted what they all do."
What does this mean? It means the 12 other drivers still alive for the Sprint Cup have one less formidable hurdle in their way. It also means that there’s an embittered spoiler in the ranks who poses threats to drivers piloting ever closer to Miami.
Also, can Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. ask for a better ally over the next seven races?
How Seriously Should We Take Ryan Newman at This Point?
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The answer, in short, is very seriously.
Ryan Newman has a Kensethian even keel about himself, and he simply finds a way to grind out the minimum effective dose to advance.
Just like 212 degrees is enough heat to boil water, Newman manages to point just high enough to wave goodbye to eliminated drivers with each successive round.
Tom Jensen wrote on FoxSports.com:
"No one milked the Chase system better last year than Newman did. After posting just a pair of top-five finishes in the first 31 races, Newman turned up the wick and had three top fives in the last five races of the year, including the runner-up finish at Homestead. He and his team know how to play the Chase game, and they do it very, very well.
"
Indeed, this year Newman has an average finish of 7.667 over the next three tracks and earned an average finish of 6.00 in the Contender Round in 2014. He’s the prototypical let’s-get-serious-now driver.
People are sleeping on Newman, and that could spell danger for the nonbelievers.
Can Kyle Busch Regain That Midsummer Form?
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There was a time, way back in July, when the most interesting story to follow from week to week was Kyle Busch’s ascent to the top 30 in the Sprint Cup standings. With four wins in five races (three in a row at one point), he looked like a threat to win the Sprint Cup if he could just get in.
After finishing second at Watkins Glen in the 22nd race of the season (his 11th), Busch finally cracked the top 30 and never relented. While Busch hasn’t won since the Brickyard 400 in July, he has registered three runners-up, including a much-needed second this past race at Dover.
Now he heads to a track in Charlotte where he has never won.
“Sometimes you can be pretty calm about the way the points go in the Chase,” said Busch in David Scott’s Charlotte Observer story. “But sometimes it’s frustrating. Your emotions can be all over the board.”
Charlotte is an especially meaningful track for Busch in 2015; it was his first race back after his gruesome injuries during the Xfinity Series race prior to the Daytona 500.
To go along with Denny Hamlin, Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth, Busch is every bit the formidable threat to reach Miami.
“This season has been a blessing so far,” Busch told Scott. “But it won’t be if we don’t make it to Homestead. It would be a dismal year if we didn’t make it to Homestead.”
The first two races of this round will be a mad scurry to see who can clinch a win because when they bolt on the restrictor plates at Talladega, then it’s anybody’s guess who will advance.
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Kevin Harvick Is the Driver to Beat
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Kevin Harvick earns a medal for overcoming the greatest challenge of the Challenger Round.
He wrecked at Chicagoland when Johnson slammed into Harvick’s left door. That sent Harvick to the garage before he ultimately finished 42nd, and he was 15th in the Sprint Cup standings. After Loudon, Harvick was still 15th in the standings and needed to win at Dover.
That’s when he got the lunch pail and went to work.
He led 355 of the 400 laps in a must-win trip around the Monster Mile. That racing under pressure seized the headlines from the dominant Joe Gibbs cars. Even Jeff Gordon, a four-time Cup champ, thinks Harvick is the driver to beat.
"What he did on Sunday was unbelievable. I will say, consistently every weekend, he's at the top of the board," Gordon said in Tom Jensen’s FoxSports.com story. "He's the guy that everyone's measuring themselves off of. In all honesty, I think he's in a whole other category right now."
Harvick has five career wins over the next three tracks and a great record in 2015. He took ninth in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, second at the Spongebob race at Kansas and eighth at ’Dega.
But, as we saw with Johnson (and nearly Harvick) in the Challenger Round, advancing, even for the game’s best, is no foregone conclusion.
Can We Trust Matt Kenseth?
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Despite Matt Kenseth’s five wins on the season and his potent push through the last two months, it’s a bit of a struggle to wholly back him as a Sprint Cup favorite.
We already established, thanks to some commentary from Gordon, that Harvick is the bar everybody must hurdle. Some must jump higher than others, and it appears Kenseth’s “leap” may be more of a step over a speed bump rather than a full-on Fosbury Flop.
NASCAR.com said of Kenseth: “Kenseth has been among the best drivers the second half of the season and with career wins at all three Contender Round tracks, you can tentatively pencil him into the Eliminator Round."
Pencil being the key word, but it does seem like Kenseth has the inside track into the Eliminator Round.
In back-to-back races earlier in the season, Kenseth finished sixth and fourth at Kansas and Charlotte. Add in that he’s the hottest driver right now, and he should be an early advancer to the Eliminator Round.
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