The Cool Down Lap: What the Chase needs is a man for all seasons

The Cool Down Lap: What the Chase needs is a man for all seasons


Conventional wisdom says Kevin Harvick will make up ground on Jimmie Johnson next Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway—and Harvick certainly believes that.
Harvick, who’s third in the standings and 62 points behind Johnson, won the most recent race at the 2.66-mile track in April, and the Earnhardt-Childress engines that power his No. 29 Chevrolets are without peer on restrictor-plate speedways.
Conventional wisdom says Denny Hamlin will run well at Talladega, too, perhaps well enough to wrest the points lead from the four-time defending NASCAR Sprint Cup champion—and Hamlin certainly believes that.
“I know we’ve been extremely strong at Talladega for the last two to three years,” said Hamlin, brimming with confidence after winning Sunday’s Tums Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway and trimming Johnson’s lead in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup to six points.
Conventional wisdom aside, past performance suggests it’s Johnson, not his closest pursuers, who will leave Talladega with a bigger lead than he has after Martinsville, even though the Amp Energy Juice 500 is a race Johnson approaches with considerable trepidation.
Johnson said before the Chase started that he would gladly take a 10th- to 15th-place finish at Talladega and watch the race from his couch. If he did that, he’d be selling himself short.
When Johnson needs strong finishes at Talladega—in the Chase—he generally gets them. In the past three seasons—the three fall Talladega races that have featured NASCAR’s new racecar—Johnson has finished second, ninth and sixth in the Chase races there.
The performances of Hamlin and Harvick, however, seem to fall off about the same time the leaves do. True, Hamlin finished fourth in the first new-car race at Talladega, but in the two fall races since, he has run 39th and 38th, thanks to a crash and an engine failure.
Harvick’s has been consistent in the past three Chase races at Talladega, but his results are mediocre—20th, 20th and 21st.
Accordingly, both Hamlin and Harvick will have to reverse the trend if they hope to gain ground on Johnson.
“Honestly, it’s the only Chase race that we have that you can’t necessarily control your destiny,” Hamlin said. “You see a lot of the same guys running up front. … (But it’s) hard to know what is the right place to put yourself in. Anybody can lead that race at any time they want to—it’s just who decides to put themselves in positions that don’t always work out.
“For me, being in this position now that I am (six points behind), I’m somewhat feeling the same way (as Johnson), because you never know. We could come out of there with a 50-, 60-point lead or be that far behind. You just don’t know. All we can do is run that race the way we always do.
“We always run up front at that racetrack. We’ve really figured out a good setup for that place, and I feel like I’ve gotten better at superspeedway racing. I think the chances are good of that first part of that equation (the 50- or 60-point lead) working out.”
To accomplish that, Hamlin will have to change his luck with the change of seasons. Same goes for Harvick.
The next Cup champion can’t afford to fall back in the fall. It will take a man for all seasons to dethrone Johnson this year.
By Reid Spencer

Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service
October 25, 2010)