With eight races to go, the bubble has tightened. Jamie McMurray, Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch are all within one race striking distance of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. This is all a product of McMurray's win and Tony Stewart wrecking Denny Hamlin which subsequently ruined Earnhardt's day.
Busch is now 121 points out of the chase. The 100 point penalty is starting to loom very large for him.
Mark Martin
continues to have an amazing year. He's running part time and is only
266 points out. He isn't going to run enough races to make it, but the
guy has been a machine.
Hamlin's 43rd place finish
didn't hurt him from a chase perspective (although the win would have
helped him in terms of bonus points. With the new chase rules, all that
matters is that you make the chase and how many wins you have.
The
consequences for Stewart could be a bit bigger. He is 243 points ahead
of 13th right now. That's nice, but not safe. DNFs were his Kryptonite
last year and he needs to finish races if he doesn't want to make
things too exciting.
Greg Biffle
has had a frustrating year. But somehow, he is still managing to hang
in there. He's 204 points back which is tough, but possible.
Martin Truex, Jr. continues to run better than Earnhardt. Who saw that one coming?
Hey now the only reason Truex is running better than Jr. is the fact Jr. has had a lot of destractions. I believe now that DEI knows Dale is leaving they're putting more towards Truex success than Jr. I feel as of right now they will both make it, but then again Dale is in the same spot he was last year.
Frankly, I'm not too worried about it. My approach is very simple. Keep doing good content. Make it unique (TBF is a humor blog about NASCAR with some real analysis and some serious subjects sprinkled in -- not a NASCAR blog with some humor). Don't be afraid to go out on a limb.
I'm probably going to turn off the approval. I need to redirect an email though first. My first post here took mere minutes before there was some really ugly racial BS.
Once I have the email redirected, I'll be able to react quickly enough to deal with everything quickly enough.
The Black Flag is NASCAR NEXTEL Cup news, information, commentary and humor. CCR1d3r provides his irreverent, out of the box thought provoking perspective on stock car racing at the highest level.
