Notebook: Paybacks could influence Chase outcome

Notebook: Paybacks could influence Chase outcome


By Reid Spencer

Look out for the driver with a grudge.
Greg Biffle said Friday at Richmond International Raceway that a driver with a score to settle, whether in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup or outside the top 12, could make life extremely difficult for the title contenders.
That's why Biffle has tried to steer clear of controversy on the racetrack.
"If I am the guy in the Chase, and I am the guy that wrecked the other guy intentionally or something else, I should have thought ahead before I did that—or I should have mended the fences before the Chase started," said Biffle, who will lock up a Chase spot by finishing 42nd or better in Saturday night's Air Guard 400. "You made your bed. Now you have to sleep in it.
"Second, am I going to be the guy to change the outcome of the championship because I'm pissed off at a guy, and now I'm going to pay him back? That doesn't mean that you have to spin the guy out or wreck him. You may run the heck out of him and not let him by or run him up in the marbles or something along the way. … "It might mean that I'm going to make it the most difficult thing over the next 10 weeks for you to pass me. That happens."
Four-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson agrees.
"You can hold a guy up as long as you want," Johnson said. "If you just want to be that big of a jerk, you just drive his line and take the air away, or trap him down on the bottom. You can hold someone up as long as you want. And that's a product of this car."
Biffle said the best way to avoid conflict in the Chase is to avoid causing trouble in the first place.
"Most of the time, you don't see my name in the headlines when it comes to the family feud—or at least I try not to (be)," he said.
DECISIONS ON NATIONWIDE SERIES UPCOMING
For months, NASCAR has been kicking around ideas that may affect the eligibility of full-time Cup drivers to win the championship in stock car racing's Triple-A division.
Nationwide Insurance, the series sponsor, has been actively involved in the discussions. Jim Lyski, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Nationwide, met with NASCAR president Mike Helton on Friday at Richmond and offered that a resolution to the complicated issues facing the series should be expected soon.
"That's a question I think that NASCAR's really wrestling with, and they've been wrestling with it for a little while now," Lyski said. "We met with Mike Helton (Friday) and they're going to resolve that question once and for all here in a couple months. We're going to go with what the sport says.
"I believe it's coming to a head here. They're going to make the call one way or the other, and they're going to stick to it."
Nationwide Series director Joe Balash says no decision has been made.
"There are several scenarios that we're looking at right now," Balash said. "We've had a couple of new suggestions that kind of came up last week, and we're doing the research on those, but I don't think we have a definite answer on where we stand.
"At the end of the day, we don't want to exclude them (Cup drivers) from the mix. That's not something that we're looking to do. But we're looking at how you balance the experience level of a double-duty driver versus a full-time Nationwide driver."
NASCAR will hold rules meetings on the Nationwide Series next week, but Balash characterized those as dealing primarily with nuts and bolts issues related to the series' new racecar, which will be introduced into the series full-time next season, after a four-race rollout (including this weekend at Richmond) this year.

WHERE'S THE SPEED?
Brad Keselowski has been fast enough in the Nationwide Series to open a commanding lead in the standings, but that success hasn't translated to his efforts in the Cup series.
Though his Penske Racing teammate, Kurt Busch, has won two races and locked himself into the Chase, Keselowski has lagged behind in his first full Cup season, and he has yet to figure out why.
"We've done a lot of tests where Kurt's gotten in my cars, and I've gotten in his cars, and we're able to run the same speeds as each other," said Keselowski, who is 26th in points. "It's just his cars seem to be faster. We don't have an answer for that. It's something that we're hoping will kind of fix itself, but to date it hasn't."