Hogging the attention

 

FORT WORTH, Texas – Think the Chase for the Sprint Cup commands attention?

Jamie McMurray won the race at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Oct. 16. Since the day after that race, how many stories have you seen about McMurray? A few, maybe, but you had to look.

In the AAA Texas 500, the three drivers competing for the championship – Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick – are starting 17th, 30th and 26th, respectively. The consensus is that this means nothing. Elliott Sadler put his Ford on the pole, turning a lap that was 1.745 mph and .249 of a second faster than anyone else. The consensus is that this, too, means almost nothing.

The Chase rules, and one has to wonder whether this is advantage or detriment to this individual race. Does concentrating on the macro detract from the micro?

It certainly detracts from the 31 drivers in the field who are in the race … but not in … the Chase.

Seven races into the Chase’s 10, it might be pertinent to note that, since the championship is almost certainly down to the aforementioned three, even the other nine “Chase drivers” have become nonentities.

Sudden anonymity means that only achievement is worthy of attention. To slice a small piece of the pie from the three who now exclude all others, the unchosen have to win. Period. End of graph. End of story.

If Sadler wins, it’s, “Get me rewrite.”

“They (the three contenders) aren’t getting any help from me,” said Greg Biffle. “The ‘16’ (his car) is out there to win, and I’m going to show all of them respect just the same as I would expect them to show me in these final races. I’m going to race them all fairly and let it be decided amongst themselves.”

In a sense, one story is the title race, and the next story is how everyone else affects the title race. An alternative route to attention – no, notoriety – is for someone not in the top three to cost someone in the top three … the championship.

It’s the modern version of the standard stories of 2004: (1.) What’s Junior doing? And (2.) what does Junior think about what everyone else is doing?

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