FYI WIRZ: NASCAR's Tony Stewart and Brad Keselowksi Are Chase Hot at Loudon

In race 27 for the Sprint Cup Series at Chicago, the first race in the Chase, Tony Stewart and Brad Keselowski moved up fast. Stewart jumped seven places with a win and Keselowski jumped five places for his fifth place finish.

In race 28 at the New Hampshire Motor speedway, Stewart logged a back-to-back win to step into the leader spot and Keselowski moved up three more spots for his third place effort.

Greg Biffle is not battling for the Sprint crown, but he beat the field to take third.

With two races done in the 2012 Chase for the Sprint Cup—Stewart and Keselowski are hot.

Chase format history seems to foster scenarios where several drivers sink fast to the bottom with a point deficit that will doom their championship chances. After two races, Denny Hamlin now is buried 66 points behind the leader Stewart.

The Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, presented by the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) on the 1.058-mile oval is in the books. Teams move on to Dover for the third race in the Chase, the 29th race of 36 in the long NSCS season.

Before shifting gears it might be worthwhile to check on what type of confidence might show up in the comments by Stewart, Keselowski and Biffle before the green flag and after the checkered flag.

Stewart and Keselowski have hot Chase momentum.

Tony Stewart (No. 14 Chevrolet) Finished 1st, Started 20th

Before the green flag:

“My approach to the Chase is the same way it’s been any other time I’ve been in a point race, you go out there, you lead laps, you try to win races and the points take care of itself," Stewart said. “If we don’t win, then we try to get second. If we can’t get second, then we try to get third. The higher you finish, the more points you get. It’s a pretty simple theory.”

After the checkered flag:

“I’ll be honest, we were about a 10th place the majority of the day,” Stewart said. “It seemed like once we got the track position, it drove a little better. Pretty much the first two-thirds of the day, we were in traffic. So we just never got clean air to do anything. The closer to the front we got, the better it drove. Man, what a way to win it. Such an irony from last year where we ran out of gas coming to the white. You hate to see anybody lose it that way, but you’ll take a win any way you can get it right now.”

Brad Keselowski (No. 2 Dodge) Finished 2nd, Started 16th

Before the green flag:

“You’ve got to take those days where, you know, things just don’t go your way and you’ve got to find a way to get a good finish out of it,” Keselowski said.

“When you come to Loudon I think you always have to focus on, you know, turning in the center and you know you hear that about a lot of different tracks. But Loudon, it’s really all about turning in the center, really long corners that are tough to get your car to work all the way through. You’ve got to have a really good car here. You’ve got to get through traffic well and manage your pit road and not lose your track position but mostly if you’ve got a car that turns in the center, you’ll be tough to beat here at Loudon.”

After the checkered flag:

“We struggled a little bit this weekend, but we executed and that's what these races are about,” Keselowski said. “I'm proud just to get through what looked to be a rough weekend with an awesome finish. Getting the right adjustments in the car all race and doing all those things that it takes. It's been a good roll."

“We weren’t as fast as we wanted to be but we worked on our car, adjusted on it and got it where we could race with it there at the end and just had good strategy and pulled out a second. We probably weren’t a second-place car but we worked hard and made something happen.”

Greg Biffle (No. 16 Ford) Finished 3rd, Started 4th

Before the green flag:

“We had a really fast car last weekend and had a random problem take us out of contention,” Biffle said. “If we can avoid things like that, I really think we have a chance to get a win before the end of the season.”

After the checkered flag:

“We were in the top 10 all day,” Biffle said. “I was a little tight on the one run when I lost a little track position, but we got adjusted on the car and got it back. I just had to save gas and when you have to save gas, you can’t go – you can’t use gas. I’m glad I had the Ford40mpg.com on the car because I think it helped me.”

FYI WIRZ is the select presentation of topics by Dwight Drum at Racetake.com.

Unless otherwise noted, quotes and information were obtained from official release materials provided by NASCAR and team representatives.

Photo credit: Dwight Drum at Racetake.com