Mike Mulhern

One last playoff spot: Clint Bowyer, David Ragan or Kasey Kahne? Richmond will tell the tale

Kasey Kahne has to beat Clint Bowyer and David Ragan at Richmond to make the Sprint Cup title chase. (Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)

By Mike Mulhern

Clint Bowyer was last season’s championship chase surprise, coming from seemingly out of nowhere, opening NASCAR’s 10-race playoffs with a victory at Loudon, N.H., and virtually the only guy who stayed within sight of Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon the rest of the chase.
This season? Bowyer is again on the hot seat as the playoff cut approaches this weekend. And David Ragan, in only his second season on the tour, in the Jack Roush ride that Mark Martin once had, is looking to knock Bowyer out of the hunt and make the chase himself.
Bowyer leads Ragan by just 17 points and leads Kasey Kahne by 48. That puts the three in a race by themselves Saturday night at Richmond.
“The bottom line is we’ve got to go out and beat these guys, no other way around it,” Ragan says of the three-man fight for the last spot in the playoffs, with Kahne hoping to make the cut too.

Championship contenders, or also-rans? Richmond will tell, for crew chief Jimmy Fennig (L) and David Ragan (Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)

If Ragan does make the chase, though, “we are definitely going to have to continue to step our program up,” he says. “One good thing about the chase—the final 10 races there’s not one track where we haven’t run well.
“I think we are a chase team…but we are not quite a championship team yet.
“You can’t contend for the championship without winning some races. Winning a race is a must.
“But there are some great guys in the chase now (Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, for example) that are locked in though they haven’t won a race yet this year.
“Certainly Carl (Edwards) and Kyle (Busch) are definitely in the driver’s seat.”
Ragan, considering his slow start to a Cup career, is a big story this season whether or not he makes the chase.
“We’ve learned from our mistakes,” Ragan says. “We’ve improved the things that were good last year, and we’ve been working extremely hard with our pit crew on building better cars. And I’ve been working to be a smarter driver.
“We’re where we need to be…though certainly not where we want to be—we want to be up there with Carl and Kyle leading laps and winning races.
“But we are on schedule. We have shown a lot of improvement.
“But we have some more improving to do before we are a championship-caliber team.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation to be in such a highly-watched, one-race kind of year, that you’re make-or-break.
“I probably don’t realize how big this race is. Maybe after the year is over I will have time to sit back and think about it. But I’m trying not to go about it like that.
“We’re tense, and we’re thinking about it.  But we’ve just got to run our race.”
Of course there might be more on the line than just making the playoffs. Roush has still not announced Ragan’s new sponsor for 2009, though it appears likely it will be UPS. But maybe only UPS if he makes the chase.
“We are pretty focused on making the chase and winning races and ending the year on a good note for our current sponsor,” Ragan says. “We will hopefully have some good news over the next two or three weeks.”

For a young driver like 22-year-old David Ragan (R), there may be no better crew chief/coach than old-school Jimmy Fennig, from the Bobby Allison school-of-racing (Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Bowyer and Kahne may have more to lose than Ragan, because they both have made the chase before, and now they may both miss it.
“We’ve been put in a position where all we can do is do our best and hope it works out for us,” Kahne says
“If we run our race, it doesn’t necessarily mean we are going to make it into the chase.”
Kahne concedes he’s surprised to be on the outside looking in at this point: “I went into Michigan (three weeks ago) kind of thinking we had been running really strong, we had been right there every weekend, and maybe we had a shot at being sixth in points.
“Then ‘just racing’ happens. We’re 14th looking in now.
“It’s going to be close to see if we can even get in the deal now.
“There’s definitely pressure. That’s a big part of the season, to make the chase.
“We are not a team to contend for a championship, but we are definitely a team to contend from fifth to 10th.”

Clint Bowyer is on the pole for Saturday night’s race-within-the-race....battling David Ragan and Kasey Kahne for the final playoff spot (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)

Bowyer too has been slipping lately, so Sunday night’s California run may have been the key stopper.
“It’s crunch time,” Bowyer says. “And if there’s anything that gives you a good feeling, it’s knowing we won there in the spring and it’s a track I typically run good at.
“But Richmond is a track where anything can happen too.
“We’ve put ourselves in this situation. It’s time to see what we are made of.
“It’s been frustrating, it’s been a frustrating summer for us. We’ve struggled and struggled on tracks that are typically good tracks for us.
“Going into California, I was worried about California. That’s a track where we haven’t been running the best. Those are the types of tracks we have been struggling at. And I was prepared to give up a little bit to David and Kasey.
“Now we’ve just got to conserve what we’ve got and keep it.
“It’s ours to lose right now. So there’s pressure, no way getting around it. You have to make the best of it and dig deep.”

Kevin Harvick L), Clint Bowyer, Jeff Burton and car owner Richard Childress (R). Harvick and Burton are in the chase, will Bowyer make it too? (Photo by Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR)

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Gil Martin, crew chief for Clint Bowyer, will be sweating out the playoffs at Richmond. (Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)