Race to The Chase? Hardly.
This weekend’s event at Richmond Int’l Raceway — the always-dramatic cutoff race before The Chase for the Nextel Cup begins — has been relegated to the category of “also ran.”
Sure, Richmond will provide us with great short-track racing like it usually does, but so much less is on the line thanks to the recent performance spike by Dale Earnhardt, Jr.’s closest competitors.
Yet again, Kurt Busch kept the Junior Nation down. So did Kevin Harvick. And so did Earnhardt’s teammate, Martin Truex, Jr.
Busch, whose Blue Deuce has been red hot lately, finished ninth in Sunday night’s Sharp Aquos 500 at California Speedway — only four spots behind Earnhardt. Harvick ended up 14th, and Truex came home sixth.
Earnhardt did everything he could do to keep his Chase hopes alive. His fifth-place effort gained him 30 points, but he still sits 128 behind Harvick for The Chase’s 12th and final berth.
The fork hasn’t been stuck in Earnhardt quite yet, but it’s getting close. He has one race, one chance — and that’s Saturday night’s Chevy Rock & Roll 400 — to make up a ton of ground in the standings.
Even Earnhardt admitted he ain’t getting it done.
“I don’t know much about the system. Never cared to,” said an exhausted Earnhardt, who along with everyone else at California Speedway endured ridiculously high temperatures all weekend.
“It doesn’t look like we’re going to make it.”
Assuming 10th-place Truex, 11th-place Busch and 12th-place Harvick don’t forget how to handle a 3,400-pound race car in a six-day stretch, Earnhardt is kaput, even though he has won three times at Richmond.
It’s a tough way for Earnhardt to go out, too. He’s leaving his late father’s company for greener pastures — err, better equipment — at Hendrick Motorsports at the end of the season. The No. 8 isn’t going with him, either.
He certainly wanted The Chase to be a part of his final days at Dale Earnhardt Inc., but it appears Earnhardt will be racing for wins in the final 10 events rather than a championship.
“It really all has to do with your finish among the other cars that are around you,” Busch said. “Yet if you just go out there and worry about your own program and shoot for a top-10 finish, that means that there is only one race left for things to go bad or go right.
“We’ve just been checking them off as we have been going here with a nice steady pace. We’ve had great cars that have allowed us to win and have allowed us to gain maximum points.
“All along, we just have the mentality of maintaining a solid finish.”
That mentality is the downfall of Earnhardt.
The most a driver can gain on a rival is 161 points, and Earnhardt, just to be safe, will need to finish 25 or so positions higher than the drivers he’s trying to catch.
And it’s not like victories have come easy for Earnhardt. He hasn’t won in 51 races — the longest drought of his career.
Earnhardt could catch a driver other than Harvick. He trails Busch by 141 points and Truex by 161. No other driver is within striking distance of the expanded top 12, and that includes Ryan Newman, whose Chase chance was nixed Sunday night because of a blown engine.
Earnhardt nearly conceded defeat after emerging from his Chevrolet.
“I’d like to thank my team,” Earnhardt said. “They worked really hard, and it’s so hot out there you get aggravated and you’re never satisfied. I’d like to think they could run this good without me, but I could never run this good without them.”