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Busch, Edwards to clash again at Pepsi 500

Submitted by SHNS on Tue, 08/26/2008 - 14:42

Yes, the weather was scorching. Temperatures at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., rose as high as 114 degrees over Labor Day weekend last year, sucking the life out of drivers and the liveliness out of its fans. What did you expect? In NASCAR, things are always heating up this time of year. After this weekend, Auto Club Speedway's second Sprint Cup Series race of the season will take place in early October starting next year, making it part of the Chase for the championship. But in the track's final Labor Day weekend race, some drivers will be chasing in a much more desperate fashion than in the early stages of NASCAR's version of the playoffs. After all, there's only one more event between Sunday's Pepsi 500 and the start of the Chase -- and drivers on the bubble do not want to see their seasons burst. "There's so much pressure on everybody right now," said Kevin Harvick, currently eighth in the points. "And there's a few more people involved in trying to get in the Chase than there probably has been in the past, and there's a lot of us that are really close, from sixth to 14th. One mistake can lead to pretty big failure in the next couple weeks." Kasey Kahne can second that. The Gillette-Evernham Racing driver entered last Saturday's race in Bristol, Tenn., 11th in the points, but an accident less than halfway into the event took him out of the competition and plunged him to 14th in the standings. Only the top 12 make the 10-race Chase, and right now 13th-place David Ragan is just 12 points back of Clint Bowyer (12th place), 57 behind Denny Hamlin (11th) and 78 back of Matt Kenseth (10th). Kahne is 44 points behind Ragan, while four-time Sprint Cup champion Jeff Gordon is anything but home free as he sits in ninth, 30 points ahead of Kenseth. Two years ago, Kahne used a victory in Fontana to help him overcome a 90-point deficit in the final two races of the year to earn a spot in the Chase. All that said, the middle of the pack isn't necessarily where all eyes should be focused Sunday. Fourteen of this season's 24 races have been won by either Kyle Busch or Carl Edwards. Busch sped out of the gate early, quickly piled up eight victories and currently sits atop the standings. Edwards, second in points, has won three of the past four races to tally six on the year. The blooming rivalry intensified over the weekend when Edwards bumped Busch aside with 30 laps to go en route to the checkered flag. Busch vented his frustration after the race by bumping Edwards during the cool-down lap, to which Edwards responded by spinning Busch out, to the delight of cheering fans. Questioned about the initial nudge, Edwards had no regrets. "I had to ask myself when I went down there in the corner, should I lift and brake early and do the best I can, or should I just kind of give him a little tap and see what happens?" Edwards said. "So that's the way it went, and that's the decision I made, and you know, I'd do it again." Dale Earnhardt Jr., enters this weekend third in points, while two-time defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson is fourth. (Contact Matt Calkins at mcalkins@PE.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)