Chase stress hits overdrive for some

On a bright, beautiful Sunday afternoon at Michigan International Speedway, the Pure Michigan 400 was as much about the continuing dominance of the Joe Gibbs Racing cars as it was about those who were fighting for their lives to be eligible to be in the Chase for the 2015 Sprint Cup title.
We didn’t have a change at the top. Matt Kenseth was dominant on the 2-mile oval, leading 146 of 200 laps and cruising to his third win of the season.
But what we saw toward the lower parts of the pack at Michigan was how some drivers saw their collars get just a little bit tighter after running into trouble on the track.
Among the casualties was Clint Bowyer. As if he didn’t have enough distraction with the Michael Waltrip Racing team situation hanging like a dark cloud over his head, the affable Kansas native got together with Ryan Newman at lap 127, hitting the inside wall after a spin at Turn 4. The damage done was more than enough to force the No. 15 5-Hour Energy Toyota into a 41st-place finish.
From a somewhat comfortable cushion as the 16th and last driver who would be in the Chase field, Bowyer saw a 50-point margin over Aric Almirola get sliced by more than half. With Almirola finishing 14th on Sunday, he gained a renewed sense of hope and closed the gap to just 23 points with still three races left to run.
As we’ve discussed with Kyle Busch – more on him shortly – there are no more mulligans left for anyone. It’s go time.
Adding to the pressure for Bowyer, Kasey Kahne saw a 15th-place finish turn into something more like a victory. He moved within 26 points of the last spot in the Chase field.
How good was Sunday’s result for Kahne? The No. 5 car had an average finish of 31st in the last six races, including 43rd at Pocono and 42nd at Watkins Glen.
Yet thanks to one competitor’s misfortune at Michigan, Kahne still has hope over the final three races before the Chase begins.
And then there’s Kyle Busch, who turned the misfortune of starting from the rear of the field (40th) after a Saturday practice crash into an 11th-place finish Sunday. He moved up a spot in the standings to 29th and increased his cushion on 31st from six to 23 points.
Even though Busch is weaving his way up the standings faster than a sprinter on a jet ski, there’s still one tiny part of the skeptical side of my brain that says the Las Vegas native won’t be able to keep up the pace.
So far, he’s proven everyone wrong, but any misstep – a wreck, pit road speeding penalty, blown engine, worn tire – could set all the momentum back into the mud.
And more importantly, anyone without a win in the top 30 who gets to Victory Lane over the next three races could spoil everything. Austin Dillon put a scare into some camps Sunday, leading 19 laps before finishing fourth.
But whatever happens from Bristol to Darlington to Richmond, the only guarantee is the final run to the Chase will require good working running shoes.

-The XFINITY series hit the second of three straight road courses Saturday at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course near Columbus, and Regan Smith scored his ideal payback after his dustup with Ty Dillon, bumping Alex Tagliani out of the way in the closing laps and winning the Nationwide Children's Hospital 200.

Best lesson from the moment: Instead of letting the frustration of past injustice tear him up inside, Smith did what he had to do to get his car to the checkered flag first. Dillon was still a factor late, finishing third, but any gain on those at the top of the standings is a good gain.

Smith is fourth in the standings and trails Chase Elliott by 26 points, while Dillon is one point further up the line in second place.

-And from the "I should have paid attention" department: Kyle Busch denied Ryan Blaney another victory, this time in Saturday's Camping World Truck Series race at Michigan. The final margin was only .157 seconds, but it was an encore that probably felt like light years away to Blaney.

The kid shook off his disappointment of Indianapolis and won at Iowa. With the series hitting Bristol in rapid-fire fashion Wednesday night, it gives Blaney the ideal scenario. If he's on the entry list, don't be surprised if the young man finds a way to get himself back in the winning groove once more.

Followers and comments are welcome on Twitter @Tomzsports.

NEXT WEEK'S RACES

Bristol Motor Speedway (.533-mile oval), Bristol, Tenn.

-SPRINT CUP: Irwin Tools Night Race, Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET/4:30 p.m, PT, NBC Sports Network. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local PRN Radio affiliate.

Race distance: 500 laps, 266.5 miles

2014 champion: Joey Logano

-XFINITY SERIES: Food City 300, Friday, 7:30 p.m. ET/4:30 p.m. PT, NBC Sports Network. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local PRN Radio affiliate.

Race distance: 300 laps, 159.9 miles.

2014 champion: Ryan Blaney

-CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES: UNOH 200 presented by ZLoop, Wednesday, 8:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. PT, Fox Sports 1. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local MRN Radio affiliate.

Race distance: 200 laps, 106.6 miles

2014 champion: Brad Keselowski

Fuel-mileage gambles backfire at Pocono

When it comes to NASCAR racing at any of the three national series, discussion of fuel mileage makes most people who don’t have an engineering background cringe.
They’ll cry that watching the cars go around a race track for an extended period of time gets boring after awhile, or “it’s just cars turning left and going around in circles all day.”
Those who saw the Windows 10 400 on Sunday afternoon at Pocono Raceway and believe in the power of logical thinking got a tension-filled finish as the race leaders tried to travel the final 92.5 miles (37 laps on the 2.5-mile triangle track) on a single tank of gas.
Something that should be noted here: a typical tank in a NASCAR Sprint Cup car holds around 18.5 gallons of fuel and averages around 4.5 miles per gallon.
Joey Logano tried to make it. His tank on the No. 22 Ford ran dry with three laps left.
So that opened the door for Kyle Busch, who was only going for his fourth win in a row. He fell a very long straightaway short of the finish line before his fuel cell expired.
Martin Truex Jr. was going for the season sweep of the Pocono races. He never got to the front as his tank burned the last drops of gas before the white-flag lap.
Matt Kenseth, who had never won at Pocono before, let alone in a fuel-mileage fight to the finish, captured the best of both worlds and picked up his second victory of the season.
In the big picture that is the final run to the Chase, Busch’s fuel-mileage gamble didn’t put him into the top 30 in points, but it didn’t push him two steps backward, either. With only five more races to run before the Chase field gets locked down, Busch actually gained some ground, but still needs 13 more points to meet the last condition and get into the run for the title.
In the final finishing order, Truex Jr. was 19th, Logano 20th and Busch 21st. From racing for the win, that’s how badly any gamble on fuel mileage can hurt.
For those who were a little more prudent on fuel – the final 63 laps were run under green – the rewards were great. In addition to Kenseth, who finished a comfortable nine seconds ahead of Brad Keselowski, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Greg Biffle completed one of the more unlikely top-5 runs they’ve had in a long while.
Biffle sat 14th in the running order with 10 laps to go, Gordon was 16th and Dale Jr. was 17th. For Biffle, it was just his second top-5 run of the entire year and first since a runner-up to Carl Edwards at the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte in May.
That’s how fast things can change. One driver’s heartbreak is another one’s nirvana, or so the saying goes.
For Kyle Busch, though, Sunday’s disappointment is only a minor bump in the road. As the series hits the road course at Watkins Glen next weekend, Busch already has two wins there (2008, 2013) and an average finish of 11.3 in 10 career starts.
He’s also the last driver to sweep the road course races (Sonoma), having done the double in 2008.
As the final five races to the Chase unfold, keep your eyes open the rest of the way. You just never know where the next roll of the automotive dice will lead.

-Among the cooler developments of the race weekend, Saturday's XFINITY Series race was nothing short of awesome, especially for how the win unfolded.

Ryan Blaney should have won last week at Indianapolis, but made one measly mistake that was just enough for Kyle Busch to slide by him on the final lap and get the victory. With Busch and the rest of the Cup regulars staying away, Blaney didn't have it easy in the stretch run at Rusty Wallace's 7/8-mile oval.

The 22 had to survive four restarts over the final 24 laps, but Blaney held off a charging Brendan Gaughan early and Regan Smith late to earn his first win of 2015. Blaney led 252 laps -- two more than the original advertised race distance -- and it was just barely good enough.

Let that effort be a lesson to all of us. If you make mistakes, you get back up, dust yourself off, and come back better than you were before.
One other note to update everyone on, since the Utah papers did not do so: Michael Self, who makes his home in Park City, made his XFINITY debut at Iowa on Saturday night. After qualifying 19th, he was running really well and staying on the lead lap in the 01 for Nebraska Transport Company in a Chevrolet, but made contact with the wall at lap 145 and ended up 32nd.

Tom Zulewski has covered multiple forms of auto racing in his 18 years as a sports journalist. Readers from wherever they are in the world can join the merry band of Twitter followers @Tomzsports.

NEXT WEEK'S RACES

Watkins Glen International (2.45-mile road course), Watkins Glen, N.Y.

SPRINT CUP: Cheez-It 355 at the Glen, Sunday, 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT, NBC Sports Network. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local MRN Radio affiliate.

Race distance: 355 kilometers (220.5 miles), 90 laps

2014 champion: A.J. Allmendinger

XFINITY SERIES: Zippo 200 at the Glen, Saturday, 3 p.m. ET/Noon PT, NBC Sports Network. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local MRN Radio affiliate.

Race distance: 200.9 miles, 82 laps.

2014 champion: Marcos Ambrose.

CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES: Off until Aug. 15 for the Careers for Veterans 200 Presented By Cooper Standard and Brad Keselowski's Checkered Flag Foundation at Michigan International Speedway.

In another wild week, Kyle Busch wins again

As if the last-lap wreck that sent Austin Dillon hurtling into the catch fence at Daytona last weekend wasn’t enough, there was more insanity at Kentucky Speedway to come. Mother Nature had her hand in things, raining down in monsoonal fashion Thursday and Friday to keep anything on four wheels off the 1.5-mile oval south of Cincinnati for as long as possible.

When the Camping World Truck Series raced in the UNOH 225 on Thursday night, another driver had a close encounter with a catch fence. Ben Kennedy didn’t have quite the wild ride Dillon did – more of a slide along the SAFER barrier after making contact – but it was enough for NASCAR to call the race early with five laps remaining in the 150-lap event won by Matt Crafton.

Friday night’s XFINITY Series race, the Kentucky 300, had a great finish as Brad Keselowski held off Erik Jones and Kyle Busch over the final eight laps to pick up the win.

With all the rain that had fallen before Saturday night’s Quaker State 400 Sprint Cup race, the lack of practice time due to the weather definitely hurt. Qualifying was cancelled for the second straight week, leaving lesser-known drivers like Ryan Blaney – who had a car that was described as “bullet-fast” by some drivers – shut out due to the rule book.

Translation: Part-time teams know rain is an evil four-letter word, especially when a spot in the race has to be earned on the track.

When the Quaker State 400 started, the worst of the weather finally went away and Kyle Busch continued his charge toward a Chase berth with his second victory in three weeks.

Busch’s story gets more and more amazing by the week. The guy only broke bones in both legs because of a crash at Daytona before the Cup season even started, returned less than four months later, and already has two wins.

But from the “not so fast” department, all the winning in the world won’t mean a thing in terms of making the Chase unless Busch somehow finishes in the top 30 in points by the time the Federated Auto Parts 400 is run at Richmond International Raceway on Sept. 12.

That means no more mulligans will be granted with only eight races left before the top 16 drivers are set. As things stand right now, Busch is still 87 points behind Cole Whitt, who sits in 30th place.

One of the big deals from Kentucky came with the introduction of NASCAR’s new rules package that takes downforce away from the cars. Judging from the reaction by drivers after the race, it’s a hit that will hit its stride at multiple tracks. Success on a mile-and-a-half oval is one thing, but the truer test will come at places like Michigan and Indianapolis, where the package will be tried out next.

If things work out there, we may have a winning formula for fans and drivers alike.

It’s not realistic to expect passes for the lead to happen four-wide over the course of every single lap, but drivers who can adapt the best along with their race teams stand the best chance of being in contention for the win at the end.

And good competition throughout the race is a big reason why fans watch the sport in the first place.

Tom Zulewski is passionate about auto racing and has covered everything from winged Sprint cars on dirt tracks to NASCAR, the NHRA and American LeMans Series over an 18-year career in journalism. Follow him on Twitter @Tomzsports.

NEXT WEEK'S RACES

New Hampshire Motor Speedway (1.058-mile oval), Loudon, New Hampshire

SPRINT CUP: New Hampshire 301, Sunday, 1:30 p.m. ET/ 10:30 a.m. PT, NBC Sports Network. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local PRN affiliate.

Race distance; 301 laps, 318.458 miles.

2014 champion: Brad Keselowski.

XFINITY SERIES: Lakes Region 200, Saturday, 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT, NBC Sports Network. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local PRN affiliate.

Race distance: 200 laps, 211.6 miles

2014 champion: Brad Keselowski.

CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES: Returns July 22 for the 1-800CarCash Mud Summer Classic at Eldora Speedway, Rossburg, Ohio.