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Kurt Busch and Tony Stewart will battle for the NASCAR Nextel Cup championship -- if they can just stay out of each other's way.
There's history between Busch and Stewart -- recent history. The pair, both of whom have won Cup titles, had the best cars in the 2007 Daytona 500 until they wrecked together in Turn 4. Busch and Stewart also went to battle on the track at Dover in June, and their respective 42nd- and 40th-place finishes weren't the half of it.
Busch behaved badly in the wake of the Dover wreck that crippled both cars, buzzing Stewart's No. 20 Chevrolet on pit road and forcing jackman Jason Lee to find a vertical jump he didn't know he had to avoid the No. 2 Dodge.
NASCAR parked Busch before the end of the race, slapped him with a $100,000 fine and docked him 100 points, a penalty that made his path to the Chase more of an uphill battle than it needed to be.
The sanctions against Busch also included probation until the end of the year, meaning the 29-year-old driver will have to be on his best behavior to make a run at the title. In the past, that has been a problem for the outspoken Busch, but since Pat Tryson took over as crew chief for the Penske Dodge in late June, there has been a sea change in Busch's demeanor -- outwardly, at least -- and a marked elevation in his performance on the track.
Tryson and Jimmy Fennig, the crew chief who guided Busch to the 2004 Cup title in the first year of the Chase, have more in common than the success each enjoyed during stints with driver Mark Martin. Like Fennig, Tryson is a calm, mature voice on the radio -- just the sort of influence that can help Busch overcome an occasional impulse.
Stewart, likewise, must rein in his emotions and let his undeniable talent take over. There's something about proximity to the blue Penske cars that makes Smoke see red, but where the title is concerned, he'll have to channel his aggressiveness. There's no room in the final 10 races for the sort of pigheaded wreck Stewart had with Ryan Newman last year in the July race at New Hampshire. That incident, more than any other, cost Stewart a place in the 2006 Chase.
Comfortably situated in the Chase this year, Stewart will give Busch a run for his money, but he won't claim his third Cup title. With Joe Gibbs Racing committed to a switch from Chevrolet to Toyota in 2008, JGR drivers are already wearing a scarlet letter on their chests. Those with a broader worldview will tell you the "T" stands for Toyota, but among the more rabid supporters of Stewart, Gibbs and Chevy, "T" is for Traitor.
The changeover won't be without its share of subtle implications for the Chase, the most notable of which will be strained relations between Gibbs and General Motors. Jimmy Makar, JGR's senior vice president for racing operations, isn't sure what Chevy's posture will be with respect to its "key partners" meetings, but it's a good bet Gibbs won't be invited to the high-level chitchats about engines and aerodynamics.
Stewart's teammate, Denny Hamlin, was third in the Cup standings last year, but Hamlin's pit crew is still too big of a question mark given the mishaps that cost the second-year driver a handful of races earlier this season. Personnel changes have removed some of the Keystone Kops element from the No. 11's over-the-wall-gang -- the current group seems to have realized that lug nuts belong on the car, not on the asphalt -- but let's see how it performs in the crucible of the Chase.
No Chase contender is without a chink in his armor. Jeff Gordon, the runaway points leader, hasn't won since the rain-shortened Pocono 500 on June 10. Since becoming the first driver locked into the Chase, Gordon has adopted a win-or-bust, these-races-don't-mean-squat attitude that has led to some very un-Gordonesque mistakes. The four-time champion spun while leading on the next-to-last lap at Watkins Glen, couldn't get out of Matt Kenseth's way at Michigan and triggered a multicar wreck at California.
Nevertheless, Gordon believes he can toggle back to a championship mindset as soon as the Chase begins, but experience across the spectrum of sports tells us that flipping the switch often is easier in theory than in practice.
Both Gordon and 2006 Cup champion Jimmie Johnson lost much of their steam at Infineon Raceway, where tricked-up front fenders on their Car of Tomorrow entries drew NASCAR's ire and cost crew chiefs Steve Letarte (Gordon) and Chad Knaus (Johnson) six-race suspensions. Maybe it's coincidence, but Hendrick Motorsports won the first five COT races and didn't win another one until Johnson took the checkered flag in the final race of the regular season at Richmond.
The Hendrick driver with the most consistent record in the 10 races leading up to the Chase is lame duck Kyle Busch, who will drive a Toyota for Gibbs next year. But the 22-year-old brother of the 2004 champion will have trouble keeping his car off the wall for 10 straight races, and with 12 drivers now in the Chase, one bad mistake can dissolve title aspirations.
In handicapping the rest of the field, don't rule out Carl Edwards, a two-time winner this year. Edwards' excellent record on COT tracks and 1.5-mile ovals suggests he might be able to improve on his third-place finish in the 2005 Chase. The same can't be said of Edwards' Roush Fenway teammate, 2003 Cup winner Matt Kenseth, whose No. 17 Ford team remains befuddled by the COT.
If the Chase becomes a war of attrition, Jeff Burton might have a chance on consistency alone, but his Richard Childress Racing teammate, Kevin Harvick, has been trending down since his spectacular Daytona 500 win in February. First-time Chasers Martin Truex and Clint Bowyer aren't likely to grab the brass ring, either.
You can't discount Johnson's back-to-back wins at California and Richmond, but the two drivers who have been the strongest across the board in the 10 races leading up to the Chase are Kurt Busch and Stewart.
Given the intangibles that accompany the Gibbs-Toyota deal, Busch gets the nod by the slimmest of margins -- and owner Roger Penske finally gets his first Cup championship.
Unless Busch and Stewart wreck each other. Then all bets are off.
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