MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Maybe these guys just have a different view of the world, but Jimmie Johnson's top three championship challengers -- Greg Biffle, Jeff Burton and Carl Edwards -- all said Sunday that they're still in the NASCAR title hunt.They feel that they can take the game to Johnson at Atlanta, Texas, Phoenix and Homestead in these final few weeks and pull off a surprise.This on a beautiful fall afternoon at Martinsville Speedway where Johnson ripped the field for his sixth win of the year.Biffle had a bad day but rallied to finish 12th, though he is now in tough shape against Johnson, 149 points down, second in the Sprint Cup standings."There for a while we were in bad shape -- we were 25th.... and if we hadn't gotten through that traffic, we would have been in big trouble," Biffle said.Yeah, but what about Atlanta, this week's stop? Biffle and Jeff Burton will need Johnson to slip badly.Biffle said he's ready for it: "I can't wait. Hang on -- we're going to let it rip."No nail in the coffin here: "No, I don't think so," Biffle said. "We're going to come and get them. We've got four more chances, and we're going to some of our best places. So they'd better be on their A-game ...''"I'm still confident we can catch him, for sure."Edwards said his third "For us this is almost a win. We've never run this well here. It's just that Jimmie is doing an unbelievable job."We had some bad luck last week, which made this race really important for us ...''Still, Edwards is trying to remain upbeat about the championship race, though he's 198 points down: "It is frustrating when you have a bad race, because you think, 'Gosh, we have to wait another year..... This isn't like a game of bowling where, 'Hey, it's over, let's start another game.'"But if we can run at these next two tracks like we expect to, we should be OK. Of course, Jimmie has run good at them, too ...''Dale Earnhardt Jr. is out of the championship hunt -- he's not going to make up those 379 points on teammate Johnson in these final four races of the season.But Earnhardt was nevertheless glad to get through the day OK, to be there at the end, to end a run of bad luck, and to wind up second to Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus."Aw, man, it's obvious that Jimmie and Chad are such a great race team," Earnhardt said.So Earnhardt had to fight to hold off a feisty Edwards."Carl is a real hard racer, and when it's 10 to go, and a guy gets under you, you have to expect to get pushed up the track a little," Earnhardt said. "I just didn't want to get pushed up into the marbles. I was trying to protect my position. Carl and I had about equal cars."Earnhardt came into this race with a different game plan than usual: "I was watching Tony Stewart for a while midway. And I was thinking he's always around at the end of these things, and I never finish this race, I'm the one who burns the brakes up."So this time I was just trying to save a whole lot of race car for the end."(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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