Cut To The Chase

Gathering for a group photo in the infield of Richmond International Raceway last Saturday night, the 10 NASCAR drivers who will compete in the Chase for the Nextel Cup eyed each other warily, like poker players over a high-stakes pot. You could almost hear their thoughts float through the cool night air: What have you been holding back, Kurt Busch ? How hard are you going to push it, Tony Stewart ? What tricks are you going to pull, Greg Biffle ? And what about you, Jimmie Johnson , how many chances are you going to take?

"There are a lot of questions that need to be answered over these next 10 weeks," said Matt Kenseth . "Anybody can win this."

When 2004 Nextel Cup champion Busch beat '03 champ Kenseth to the finish line at Richmond , the checkered flag waved on NASCAR 's 26-race regular season. For those two drivers, and for the other eight who qualified for the playoff-style Chase (box, page 102), the season begins anew on Sunday with the Sylvania 300 in Loudon, N.H., the first event in a 10-race sprint to the title (box, page 104). One driver, Ryan Newman , sneaked into the Chase field at the last minute: Eleventh in the standings, one point behind Jamie McMurray , heading to Richmond , he finished 12th in the race and leapfrogged McMurray (who crashed and came in 40th and fell to 13th) for the 10th spot. Under NASCAR 's old format Newman would be a hopeless 661 points behind the leader, Stewart , with 10 races left, but under the Chase format he is only 45 back. (Point totals are recalibrated so that only five points separate each driver from the one behind him.)

NASCAR 's two biggest stars-- Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon --failed to qualify and have to settle for battling McMurray , Elliott Sadler and Kevin Harvick for 11th place and the consolation prize of $1 million. Meanwhile, such up-and-comers as Kyle Busch and Brian Vickers can still make their bones by beating the big boys.

All eyes, though, will be on the Chase drivers. Leading the way is regular-season champ Stewart , who won five of seven races between June 26 and Aug. 14 and finished 185 points ahead of Biffle in the standings. Stewart 's sizzling summer actually started on the first Monday and Tuesday in June, when the Home Depot team tested at Michigan International Speedway . During that session crew chief Greg Zipadelli hit on a setting for the car's suspension that enabled Stewart to stay on the throttle through the turns longer than his competitors. But Stewart 's mechanical advantage has appeared to wane in recent weeks--he hasn't finished among the top four in the last month--and there's a sense in the garage that the field has caught up to him.

"Technology bleeds out in our sport," says Mark Martin , who starts the Chase in sixth place. "After seven or eight races of one guy dominating, other teams start to figure out the secret."

"I feel like we've caught [ Stewart 's] team," says Biffle, a top three finisher in each of the last three races. "But you don't have to win every race to win the championship. It's the guy who doesn't have any major failures and finishes sixth or better in every race who's going to win it all."

That's pretty much how Kurt Busch won the Cup last year. By his own admission he didn't show his competitors how fast his number 97 Ford was capable of consistently running in '04 until the start of the Chase. Then he won the first race of the playoff, in Loudon, and went on to collect nine top 10 finishes, best in the Chase. Busch credited his late surge largely to the fact that he saved four test sessions-- NASCAR allots teams nine per season--for the final 2 1/2 months, more than any other driver in the series. Each test allows a team to spend up to two days at a track trying out different setups. And while most teams last year used the majority of their tests during the regular season to ensure a Chase berth, Busch and his crew chief, Jimmy Fennig , gambled by waiting to use the extra practice time during the Chase, a strategy that the team stayed with this year.

The drivers who narrowly made this year's Chase-- Newman (two tests remaining), Kenseth (two), Carl Edwards (one) and Jeremy Mayfield (none)--burned most or all of their tests during the regular season, which puts them at a disadvantage now. The majority of the drivers who comfortably cruised into the second season-- Stewart (three tests left), Biffle (four), Johnson (four), Kurt Busch (five) and Martin (four)--all have ample practice time. "Teams are copying what we did last year," says Busch . "I think everyone realizes it's important to make a statement in that first race."

Sunday's Sylvania 300 is particularly significant to the drivers entering the Chase in slumps. Johnson , for instance, held the top spot in the standings for 16 of the first 20 races, then lost his lead--and his momentum--on Aug. 7 when he slammed into the wall at Indianapolis Motor Speedway late in the Allstate 400. Johnson wasn't seriously hurt, but since then his average finish is a pedestrian 21.7. He has won two of the last five races in Loudon, and a momentum-generating top 10 run at the one-mile flat track would enhance his title hopes. "I'm most worried about the 20 car [ Stewart ] and all the Roush cars," says Johnson . "I mean, Roush has half the field."