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Welcome to the Cup Scene Daily for
Vol. III,No.VIXII FINAL EDITION
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Quote Of The day: 7 DAY ARCHIVE SundayMonday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday INSIDE TODAY'S ISSUE: Two Roush crew chiefs fined for fuel cell infractions Carl Long quits team Kenseth Sneaking Up On Leaders IRL's Fisher to make NASCAR debut Movie airing to feature Hendrick Obscure group seeks to protest NASCAR at AMS Sadler approves of smoother, SAFER Martinsville Kansas Speedway to add 1,600 seats for 2005 Traffic plays a major role at Dover ISC selects site near Marysville Washington Racing fans come early, take over Dover Cup Scene readers speak out
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The cars driven by Mayfield and Stewart were damaged in an early-race accident. Both cars returned, their drivers desperately trying to recoup some valuable track position. Stewart couldn't maintain the minimum speed mandated by NASCAR, and left the race for good after completing only 83 laps, relegating him to 39th place. Mayfield stayed out until the end and ended up 35th after completing 251 laps. Going into Round 2 of the Chase this weekend at Dover International Speedway, Mayfield is 10th in the Chase standings, 142 points behind Dale Earnhardt Jr. and New Hampshire race winner Kurt Busch, who each have 5,210. (Earnhardt is the official leader this week, via NASCAR's tiebreak -- he has four victories this season compared to Busch's three.) Stewart, fourth going into Round 1, has fallen all the way to eighth place, 124 behind Earnhardt and Busch. After a few days to cool off and think about the upcoming races, beginning with Sunday's MBNA America 400 at Dover, the 2002 series champion sounds a lot more positive – and determined. "My philosophy in my 25 years of racing has been that if you win races then the points take care of themselves," Stewart said. "If we don't win, then we try to get second. If we can't get second, then we try to get third. The higher you finish, the more points you get. "It's a pretty simple theory. You just go out and finish as high as you can each week and let the points fall where they may." There may not be a better track for Stewart to begin his comeback on than Dover's Monster Mile. Stewart has an average finish of fourth and has finished outside the top 10 only once in his 11 starts on the high-banked oval. Overall, Stewart has two wins, nine top fives and a seventh, has led 1,066 of a possible 4,400 laps and has completed all but one lap run on the track since his first race there in 1999. "We've looked at the schedule and said, 'OK, these are tracks coming up where we've had success in the past.' It definitely makes you feel better," Stewart said. "But, at the same time, every week is a different week and you've got to take it one week at a time because you never know what's going to happen. "Obviously, what happened at New Hampshire didn't help us any, but it didn't kill us either. We're going into these last nine races with absolutely nothing to lose. There's no pressure, really. Every week when we unload at the track we'll be looking for nothing else but a win." Jeremy Mayfield, who suffered the same fate as Stewart at New Hampshire and now is 10th in the Chase, 142 behind the leaders, is in about the same spot he's been all season --- needing to win or run very close to the front every week to be a contender.
He won the Dover pole in the spring and was runner-up in the race last fall. "We're going to pick up right where we left off in June," he said. "The thing that bothers me from this past weekend is that we worked so hard to get where we were," Mayfield said. "To have something that was totally out of our control set us back that far was devastating. These guys worked all year long to get to where we were, and for somebody to do a stupid move like he (Robby Gordon) did, it's devastating. "We will rebound from it. The hardest part now is we have to work harder.
"It's possible to make up the points because other guys will have problems, too, just like we did. But if somebody has a flawless nine-race deal, then it's going to be tough." Although Kurt Busch's driving style fits Dover International Speedway, the co-leader of the Nextel Cup championship chase has not mastered The Monster Mile. That's a surprise, because no driver is any better at Bristol Motor Speedway, the only other high-banked concrete oval on the NASCAR circuit. Busch has three victories in his last four starts on the half-mile at Bristol, but is winless in eight races at Dover. "Our success at Bristol hasn't translated," said Busch, who did win a truck race here four years ago. That came two days before his debut in NASCAR's top series. "We qualified well at 10th place, and went on to finish 18th, so it was a solid way to kick off our Cup series efforts," Busch said. With five subsequent top-10 finishes, Busch has been competitive here. But he has not come close to winning. Crew chief Jimmy Fennig hopes that ends Sunday in the MBNA America 400. If it does, Busch will have a second straight victory in just the second race of NASCAR's inaugural top-10 showdown. Busch won last Sunday in New Hampshire, and came here tied with Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the points lead with nine races remaining.
If Busch wants a lesson on how to win here, Roush Racing teammate Mark Martin provides the best example. No one on the circuit has won more races at Dover. But the teammate concept isn't very strong this fall, because Martin also is part of the top 10. He's seventh in the standings as he continues the quest for his first championship in his 18th season. Martin won here in June, getting his fourth Dover victory. He also has five second-place finishes on the track. And now Martin says, the real racing begins. Loudon was, in his eyes, an obstacle course, an exercise in survival ... which Tony Stewart, Jeremy Mayfield and Ryan Newman failed. "This is one that we've been looking forward to. Dover is a great race track - and it may even be my favorite - so I always look forward to racing here," Martin said. "There are six tracks of the nine left we really feel like we should run strong, and Dover is the first of those. We won in the spring, and we've been really good on these types of tracks in the past few weeks. Hopefully we can build on that and gain some ground. "The team has done an outstanding job so far this season. We needed to get through Loudon, and we were able to. Now it's time for us to go do some racing." Four-time series champion Jeff Gordon also figures to be tough the rest of the way. For him, the race begins in qualifying Friday, when he'll try to extend his series lead in poles with a seventh. "The obvious advantage is less traffic to deal with and track position," Gordon said. "Because pit lane is so narrow and small at Dover, it seems we fight harder for track position."
Gordon has made great use of that. The key to maintaining it is getting in and out of the pits quickly.
Earnhardt
said. "Seriously, to lead the points this early in the
Chase probably doesn't mean that much, because we still
have a long way to go, but it sure beats the hell out of
being anywhere else in the standings. I was real proud of
my team at New Hampshire. The Eurys (crew chief Tony Sr.
and car chief Tony Jr.) did a great job, and I think we
can make a serious run for this championship.
"For me mentally, it's more intense [now than in the first
26 races of the season], because what we've worked so hard
for is within our grasp if we can just put together a
better string of races than nine other guys. [New
Hampshire] was a good start. This weekend at Dover will be a
whole new ball game. We've got to run good."
Earnhardt knows he was lucky to finish third here in June.
We weren't very
good there last time, but somehow we avoided all the wrecks
and finished third [in June]. We tested there last week,
and it went pretty well."
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