Racing News Digest

After starting 5th, Tony Stewart went on to win the Price Chopper 400 presented by Kraft Foods at Kansas Speedway.

Tony’s win help propel him up 1 position in the points to 4th but more importantly he chopped off almost 40 points in his points deficit to Mark Martin now only being -67 points back from the top.

On the last pit stop Tony and team decided to go with 2 tires.

“Darian — you don’t question him when he makes a call,” Stewart said. “You know it’s the right thing to do, and then you go from there. The big thing was just not driving the tires off the thing, in case we got a [late] caution and a green-white-checker. We had a little bit left, but we didn’t leave too much out there.

“We got two tires earlier and were able to go really quick on ‘em, so it was pretty much, I think in our opinion, a no-brainer what to do there. The guys who took four never could gain the track position back. We had a really good car on two tires, and Darian and the guys on the pit crew are the ones that got us the win. They got us track position, and I was able to pick which line I wanted on the restart, and that won us the race.”

10 of the top 12 finishers were Chase contenders. The 2 that finished outside of the top 12 finished pretty far back. Brian Vickers finished 37th with engine problems and only completing 208 of the 267 laps. This really hurt Vickers in the points. This caused him to drop to the bottom of the barrel to 12th in points and -250 points behind leader Mark Martin. While I was happy to see Vickers get into the Chase, I didn’t really see him as a contender. So he is falling in the points about where I expected to see him.

Ryan Newman was the other driver to finish outside the top 12. Newman finished 22nd after having a rough day. I know at one point he went a lap down after pitting under green and then having the caution come out before the green flag pit cycle was completed. Newman dropped 2 position in the points to 9th and now sits -164 points back from Mark Martin adding 54 points to his deficit. Newman’s performance today was not surprising while us Newman fans were hoping for a better performance. Newman has struggled on the 1.5 mile tracks this year with mixed results.

This is from Newman’s pre-race race release –

Newman feels the next three races on intermediate tracks will be pivotal for the U.S. Army/Haas Automation team. After Kansas, the following two races are at the two-mile Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif (Oct. 11) and at at the 1.5-mile Lowe’s Motor Speedway near Charlotte (Oct. 17).

“We have five Chase races, including the next three, on either a 1.5 or two-mile track,” explained Newman. “So, it’s very important to get a handle on our U.S. Army/Haas Automation Chevy Impala SS for these types of tracks. We’ve had some decent runs on the mile-in-a-half and two-mile tracks, but haven’t been as consistent as we’re going to need to be if we want to remain in title contention.”

In nine races this season at the intermediate tracks, Newman has had a 16.1 finishing average, compared to an overall average of 13.6.

Only 114 points now separate 8th place Greg Biffle from Mark Martin sitting on the top. Last week when Jeff Gordon was in 8th (now in 7th) it was 122 points.

Kasey Kahne once again had a good race today finishing 6th, gained one position to 11th and still lost in the points. He fell back 1 more point to -190 away from the top.

That just illustrates how close this Chase is.

I had pretty much predicted ealier in the week the Jeff Gordon and Greg Biffle were going to have good races today and they did. Both of these drivers had the better “numbers” of any chase drivers at Kansas. And part of that prediction was that the points were going to get closed up a little which they did, while not to any great degree.

A definite line looks drawn right now between Ryan Nemwan in 9th (-64 pnts) and the rest of the field. Is this were the line between contenders and non-contenders will be drawn?

As soon as the official race results and standings are released tomorrow, I will have them uploaded.