Burning up Atlanta – Penultimate pre-Chase race an exciting preview of contest to come

By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers

With the finish of the Emory Healthcare 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the field for the Chase for the Sprint Cup is essentially set, even though there’s one more race to run, at Richmond International Raceway on Saturday night, before the start of the 10-race run to the title.

Only the bottom two positions are at stake, and Greg Biffle and Clint Bowyer are still fairly secure. All Biffle has to beat is one driver at Richmond, and Bowyer has a 117-point lead over 13th-place Ryan Newman.

Even more importantly, several drivers and teams, besides having clinched Chase berths, appear to be peaking just in time to make spirited runs to the title.

Atlanta race winner Tony Stewart and runner-up Carl Edwards both have been running strong of late, but their Atlanta runs were among their best of the season.

“We need this momentum,” Stewart said after taking his first win of the year. “This team has been doing an awesome job for the last two and a half or three months, and we’ve been kind of quiet this year, we took off slow but thank goodness … these guys with this Chevrolet have been doing a great job.

“The pit stops have been good. The cars have been good. With [crew chief] Darian [Grubb] and these guys at our shop, it has just been really fun the last couple of months.”

Third-finishing Jimmie Johnson, the four-time and defending Cup champion, said he and his crew finally hit on a chassis set-up that responds positively to mid-race adjustments, something that had eluded them in recent weeks.

“We have had some problems on the mile-and-a-half, two-mile tracks,” Johnson said. “[But] with the set-up we brought [to Atlanta] and the way we worked on things,  it seemed we could adjust the car and improve throughout the night and be there at the end of the race.”

Denny Hamlin, who like Johnson has five wins going into the Chase, was blazing fast until a blown engine sidelined his pole-winning No. 11 Toyota after he’d led seven times for 74 laps.

“I know if we had the reliability that we could win this championship, and the odds would be pretty good to win the championship if I can just keep it together for 10 weeks,” he said.

Kurt Busch was fast at Atlanta, even on worn tires, and he salvaged a sixth-place finish even with damage from a late-race run-in with Kasey Kahne.

Busch said he and his team still have work to do if they’re going to seize the momentum in the Chase.

“We’ve got to turn some things around to see what we have against these guys if we’re going to run for the title,” he said.

His brother Kyle Busch was able to score a top-five finish despite losing a lap early on, and points leader Kevin Harvick was fast until a blown tire relegated him to a 33rd-place finish.

Johnson said all that means fans can expect a barn-burner of a Chase.

“If you look around, we’re going to have a really exciting Chase,” he said. “There are a lot of teams coming together now.”

Edwards agreed, saying he puts a lot more stock in the value of momentum than he once did.  “I used to never believe in momentum, but I’ve never run so poorly for so long,” he said. “Now, I’m seeing this turnaround, and it’s been a couple of months, and I think I understand the team more and I understand where we’ve been gaining.

“So, for that reason, I believe in this momentum that we have and I believe it will apply to future races.

“You can’t do anything about a cut tire or a broken valve spring or something like that, but at least we’ve proven to ourselves the last couple months that we can do it, and that feels good for us.” Johnson said he too sees value in a good start to the final 10 races.

“We all look for things to encourage the team, to cheer the guys up and get them rallied around – something to send them off like warriors ready to go and charged up for whatever is out there for them.”