News-Record.com

If your NASCAR schedule isn't handy, you ought to know by instinct that the Bristol night race is right around the corner, which it is. Saturday night, 7 p.m. TNT. If you're not tuned in, you better have a pretty darned good excuse.

You don't need the Chase for the Chase to get you wound up for Bristol, the most exciting and most surprising race on the schedule. Same for Richmond. No extra excitement needed there, either. California? Yeah, the exercise of figuring who's in and who's out of the Chase will help.

Ah, the Chase. Now two years old, it has added an extra something to the NASCAR schedule. In years past, we'd be looking at the top of the Cup standings -- Man, Tony's pulling ahead! Can Mark Martin get back into contention? That Biffle guy, he's sure fallen back in the last few weeks.

But really, because of the Chase, we don't really care about that, at least not for another couple of months. Three weeks from now, Stewart's 100+ point lead over Jimmie Johnson will be down to 5, and we'll start all over again.

This weekend, and for the next two weekends, we'll be looking at eighth through 13th or so. Can McMurray hang on to 10th? Can Sadler turn things around and make it back to the top 10? Do Matt Kenseth and Jeff Gordon have enough time left?

If you pick up today's paper, there's an AP story that's more or less an autopsy of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s season. There's also a mention of Gordon, NASCAR's other superstar who might be watching this year's Chase from 11th on back. He's 58 points out of 10th with three races to go. If I'm a betting man, and I'm not, I'd bet that Gordon will slide into the top 10 and make a run for his fifth Cup crown. As of the first Chase race, at New Hampshire, he'll be 45 points behind the leader, and he's got too many tricks up his sleeve to do what Mayfield did last year, and that's make the Chase and fade immediately to irrelevancy.

But, see, this is how the Chase has warped our thinking. Gordon is in twelfth place in the standings right now, 624 points and 11 spots behind Tony Stewart.

Say that again as hard as it is: Jeff Gordon is in TWELFTH PLACE. Jeff Gordon has never finished a season in 12th place. Since 1994, his second full season in Cup, Gordon has finished no worse than ninth. That's 11 straight seasons of top 10 finishes. That's freakin' amazing. That's Fixtureville. Not even Dale Earnhardt himself managed that many top 10 season finishes in a row.

But if this were two years ago, we'd be shaking our heads and wondering what the heck happened to Jeff Gordon and how he got so lousy all of a sudden, if we could even remember who he was. Remember, no one comes back from 11 spots and 6 million points back, not even Gordon himself. But it's the Chase era now, and we can still talk about Gordon hoisting his fifth Cup trophy in Victory Lane at Homestead in November and have people say, "Y'know, that could happen."

Like I said, warped. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing depends on what you think of Gordon. But remember, don't bet against him.