Drivers in Final Spots In Chase Need Strong Runs at Dover

Matt Kenseth and Jeff Gordon came into this race in a hole and now have to find a way to climb out of an even deeper hole.In the last two years we have seen two drivers go winless into the Chase and steal a win in the first race of the "playoffs".

And we have seen drivers dig themselves a huge hole and never recover. Kenseth and Gordon are hoping they won't be in this position leaving Dover. They both need have great runs at Dover, that means a win or top five finish.Even a top 10 would give these two teams a much needed boost.

To be fair, what happened on Sunday with Gordon wasn't  by his own fault. First off Robby Gordon short pitted blocking Gordon in his own pit stall for two consecutive stops. Forcing him to  drop it into reverse and pull around him. Losing valuable track position in the process.

On one of the final restarts Patrick Carpentier spin force Gordon to check up and flat spot his tires. Making a late pit stop pushed him back to 19th position with less than 30 to go.He did make up a couple spots and finished 14th.

Lap traffic was awful on Sunday. Many drivers on the lead lap had complaints about the lap traffic both on pit road and on the track. While they are battling each other on the restarts,chase contenders and lead lap cars are jockeying for position. Causing the perfect storm.

Gordon had a strong car. He was  better on long runs and that exactly what we had on Sunday long green flag runs. Gordon was passing cars and running pretty good lap times.

Yes he wasn't a factor but this team knows they need to accumulate points and with the day Kyle Busch had capitalizing on that was essential. Had they not had to pit this team would have had a top 10 finish. His 11th in the standings isn't true to what kind of day they should have had.

For Kenseth they struggled.They didn't have a great car all day but they had slowly began to make some ground on track and in the pits. They two were never really a factor but they needed a good finish themselves and were putting themselves into position for at least a top 10 run.

But lap 229, Kenseth's day went for just okay to worse in seconds. Chad McCumbee got loose and took out Kenseth setting in a chain reaction crash that saw David Gilliland t-bone Kenseth in what looked like a very painful hit. 

Not finishing the race relegated this team to a 40th place finish and  pushing him over 170 points back from  leaders   Carl Edwards and Jimmie Johnson.  The accident made a tough pill, even harder to swallow.

These two teams know they are not having great years, but tough luck and  bad timing  keeps pushing these champion drivers farther from the pack in what is a ten race shootout for the big prize.