NASCAR Cup Series

For four unlucky drivers, this 2014 Chase will be over in Dover

Published Sep. 25, 2014 3:49 p.m. ET

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Jeff Hammond

You have probably been hearing the teams as well as the media folks constantly saying this week, "It's over in Dover."

There's a pretty simple reason for that. When the 2014 Chase for the Sprint Cup started three weeks ago, we had 16 drivers competing for the championship. Now Sunday, after the checkered flag waves at Dover, four of those 16 teams will be eliminated from the championship while the remainin 12 teams advance to the next round.

To make things even tighter, the 16th-place team currently is only 10 points out of the magical spot of 12th, which is the cut-off slot for who advances and who doesn't. In the old format, with his blown motor in the first race of this year's Chase, Aric Almirola would have been done. But last Sunday he had a great comeback run at Loudon, finished sixth in the race and now is only 10 points away from advancing to the next round.

With all that said, I am going to stick to my guns when I first filled out my championship bracket grid. The first three I believe that will be eliminated will be Aric, AJ Allmendinger and Greg Biffle. Now my fourth candidate is getting a little bit sticky right now in that who I thought was going to get knocked out may actually survive.

Originally I had picked Kasey Kahne not to make it out of the first round, but after two mediocre runs by the No. 5 car he's actually hanging in there. Denny Hamlin's bad performance has put him in the bottom four right now, but Denny is only six points behind Ryan Newman who is holding onto that oh-so critical 12th position.

I know we all were pretty disappointed about how the race at Richmond in September played out with it being the last race of the regular season. I think Sunday at Dover will make up for it ten-fold. The points are so close and at a place like Dover you can find yourself in a snap of your fingers already a lap down. You might never get the chance to recover from that.

You have something like nine drivers only separated by 18 points. I think that's what makes this new format so phenomenal because it's already this tight in this round and we still have two more pressure-packed rounds to go through before we even get to the final winner-take-all race between only four drivers at Homestead in November.

And I don't care who you are, but the mistakes we have seen from this 16 Chase contenders in only two races has got to be cleaned up. We've seen all kinds of sloppiness with mechanical issues, loose lug nuts ... you name it and they've had it happen to them. They have got to get that tightened up immediately.

Trust me, the mistakes we've seen already in the first two races, if not corrected, will put you right out of this Chase before we get to Homestead if you aren't careful. Remember the old saying, "Don't beat yourself?" Well, now more than ever with the championship on the line you simply can't let mistakes take you out.

It is one thing to get beat because a driver had a better car and an overall Chase than you. It's another to be beaten for the championship because you or your team had self-inflicted wounds.  

VIDEO: Jeff Hammond asks, 'Are the 1.5-mile tracks the key to winning this 2014 Sprint Cup title?'

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