NASCAR Cup Series

Championship field full of talented veterans

Published Sep. 11, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

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Larry McReynolds

As we head into the 2011 NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup, we really do have the cream of the crop of past champions and experienced drivers all vying for this year’s crown. We’ve got drivers like Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Kurt Busch and a couple others that have reached the pinnacle in the Cup series in the past.

That experience of racing for the championship and winning does play a role.

At the same time you have people like Kevin Harvick who was right there to the bitter end last year only to fall a little bit short. So he is Chase battle-tested in my book. He knows what he could have and should have done different last year, but was unable to.

If you go back to 2008, there was Kyle Busch winning eight races during our regular season. He was so hot going into the Chase that I think there were some folks ready to start engraving his name on the championship trophy.

However, from basically the drop of the green flag of the start of the Chase, the wheels literally and figuratively came off that team and Kyle was never a factor in the title race.

Then there is Denny Hamlin and his experience last year fighting to win the championship. Heck, he was even leading the points going into the last race of the year only to see his championship dreams slip away. You know, experience is experience whether it is gained by success or even gained by failure. So like Kevin, while Denny is not a former Cup champion, he does have first-hand experience of what it will take to win it all.

For Brad Keselowski it is obviously a little different. This will be his first time in the Chase.

Now on the plus side of things for him, Brad is arguably our hottest driver in the Cup series right now. His remarkable summer turnaround will be something that folks will be talking about for a long time in our sport. As we all know, running well and having a fast car can make up for a lot of things. Brad has both. Also, while it is a totally different series with a different points structure, you can’t overlook that Brad is our reigning Nationwide champion. So he has experience in a championship battle and knows the pressure that comes with that.

Carl Edwards is another one of those guys that has gotten close but has been unable to win the championship. Carl has even finished second in the points, so he has that championship battle experience, even though he came up a little short at times. You can actually say that for all the drivers in this year's Chase.

The other thing I like about this year's Chase is we have drivers with 2011 victories under their belts. I have been very vocal all year about how much I love the fact that the emphasis is back on winning in our sport. Until these last few weeks, when the points are really, really tight, you haven’t heard drivers climbing out of their cars talking about “having had a good points day.”

This year has seen drivers upset with not winning. Heck, earlier this year you heard Tony Stewart, who had just come home second in a race climb out and say, “second sucks.”

The dynamics of the new Chase format, along with what seems to be a lot stronger Chase field, leads me right back to what I have said since the start of the season – I believe we are going to have our best Chase since it was created.

As I mentioned earlier, Keselowski is our hottest driver right now and heading into his first Chase. You’ve got what looks to be a reborn Gordon with a fire in him we haven’t seen in a few years. He wants to join his teammate Johnson as a five-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion. That team is doing everything right. They are leading laps, or at least finishing in the top five.

I think Jeff realizes after these last couple years that once again, it’s about winning. That’s the difference maker. Just look at Harvick in last year's Chase as a recent example. Kevin was very consistent all year long. He was our points leader for the regular season.

However, once in the Chase, consistency simply wasn’t good enough. Kevin had nine top-10 finishes out of 10 races in last year's Chase. Not only did he not win the championship by putting those kinds of numbers up on the board, he didn’t even finish second. Nine top-10 finishes in 10 races only got Kevin a third-place finish in the final series points. Again, it’s all about winning and if you can’t win, then you need to finish high up in the top five for 10 straight weeks.

Speaking of Johnson, while all the talk has been him only having one win this year, I wonder if folks are really noticing that as a team, they are getting hot again. We’ve seen this the last five consecutive years. When we get to the Chase, the No. 48 team just seems to have another gear that the others don’t.

Darrell Waltrip actually has been saying since we rolled into Daytona in February that the road to the championship goes through that No. 48 car. While I have been skeptical of that for the last few months because of their inconsistency and lack of wins, now I have to admit it looks like that No. 48 is getting hot again.

The difference this year, to me more than other years, Jimmie has a lot more teams out there just as hot.

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