What Chase drivers have to do at Phoenix to move on to Miami
Jeff Gordon’s Chase fate is simple. He’s guaranteed to be racing for the championship at Homestead next Sunday. There’s still work to be done for the seven other drivers in the Chase who haven’t won a race in the third round.
Here’s how the Chase standings look (minus Gordon) entering the race.
• Kyle Busch: 4,080 points
• Kevin Harvick: 4,079 points
• Martin Truex Jr.: 4,076 points
• Carl Edwards: 4,069 points
• Brad Keselowski: 4,057 points
• Kurt Busch: 4,048 points
• Joey Logano: 4,013 points
Logano’s scenario is simple as well. He has to win to have any hope of advancing to the final round. With a deficit of 63 points to Truex, who would be the last driver advancing to Miami as of Friday, he can’t make up the gap in one race.
Kyle Busch advances automatically if he finishes third or better with no laps led, fourth with one lap led and fifth if he leads the most laps. Kevin Harvick, since he’s one point behind Kyle Busch, needs to finish one spot better in each of Busch’s scenarios. So second if he leads no laps, third if he leads one and fourth if he leads them all.
Given his Phoenix track record recently – four straight wins – it’s a good bet Harvick will accomplish that barring a failure or accident.
For the four drivers not named Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Joey Logano, things are a bit complicated. None of them can clinch on their own without winning the race.
Kurt Busch and Keselowski are in the worst situation among the four. Keselowski is 19 points behind Truex and Busch is 28. Not only would they have to make up that gap on Truex (or a larger one on Kyle Busch and/or Kevin Harvick) they have to worry about Carl Edwards, who is 12 points ahead of Keselowski and 21 ahead of Kurt Busch, who said he has an idea of what the perfect scenario could be in the closing laps on Sunday.
“The perfect day for Stewart Haas Racing would be for [my] car to win and for Kevin Harvick to finish second,” Busch said. “That would allow both of us to advance to the Championship Round at Homestead. We hope we are in that position. This race here in the spring, Kevin won, and I was running second with about 40 to go. We chose to come in for tires and we didn’t get back up through there and ended up finishing fifth. We were running 1-2 with 50 laps to go in the spring, so I would like to see that happen again.”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
