With three races to go in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, points leader Carl Edwards and second-place driver Tony Stewart have separated themselves somewhat from the pack, making the championship battle look like a two-driver contest as the Cup circuit heads to Texas Motor Speedway for this weekend’s AAA Texas 500.
Edwards, speaking on this week’s NASCAR teleconference, said he relishes the chance to get back to Texas, where he has three career wins.
“We’ve run really well there,” he said. “There could not be a better race track for us to be going to. I feel like we made it through the first seven races of the Chase better than we expected. Now we just go these last three races and go for broke.”
For that matter, the other tracks left on the schedule are good ones for Edwards as well. He as a win at Phoenix International Raceway and three victories at Homestead-Miami Speedway, site of the season finale.
Stewart also has wins at all three tracks, but his only win at Phoenix came in 1999, and his two Homestead victories came in 1999 and 2000, before the track was changed to its current configuration. He also has a win at Texas in 2006, but he has been on a hot streak of late, having won three of the seven Chase races this year.
Stewart has begun playing word games of sort with Edwards, saying he had better not sleep in the coming weeks. Edwards, as he has since Sunday at Martinsville, maintained that Stewart isn’t getting under his skin. And he said he’s not one to get into mind games.
“My job is to go out here and do the best I can, win these championships,” he said. “I just got done talking to Tony. We joked around about it a little bit.
“It’s fun to go back and forth, give each other a hard time. At the end of the day, I think Tony and myself would both be foolish if we thought all we had to worry about was one another. ... I think you’ve still got three or four guys behind us that are just as dangerous, maybe even more, in this championship.”
Edwards acknowledged that there have been times when he let pressure situations get the best of him.
“Historically I’ve been a guy that could lose my composure as fast as anyone,” he said. “It’s not natural to me to stay calm and try to keep moving forward. My natural reaction is always to get really excited.
“But I think through some of the bad times that we’ve had, the frustrations we’ve had, I think all those things have helped me to realize that, ‘Hey, look, the goal right now is to go out and win this championship.’”
Denial from Mayfield
Jeremy Mayfield’s attorney said the former NASCAR Sprint Cup driver had no knowledge of the stolen items nor the methamphetamine found on his property that led to his arrest Tuesday.
Mayfield was charged with one felony count of methamphetamine possession after police found 1.5 grams of what they believed to be methamphetamine on his property, according to a Catawba County (N.C.) Sheriff incident report. The drugs were found while four law-enforcement agencies executed a search warrant for stolen property at Mayfield’s residence, which he has in the past stated is more than 400 acres. They found approximately $100,000 in stolen property.
Ragan to drive Saturday
David Ragan is set to drive the No. 08 Ford for Randy Hill Racing in this weekend’s Nationwide Series race at Texas. Ragan is taking over for fellow Georgian Casey Roderick, a rookie who has failed to qualify in his past two attempts — at Richmond and Charlotte.
Team officials say Ragan is taking the wheel in part to help the team evaluate its racing program.
Danica Mania is back
Danica Mania returns to NASCAR this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway, and this time it’s a full-time phenomenon. Danica Patrick, done for the year — and possibly for her career — with the IndyCar Series, returns to NASCAR’s Nationwide Series for the final three races of the season and a full-time gig next year, along with some Sprint Cup starts in 2012.
In nine Nationwide starts this season, she has an average finish of 16.1 with a best of fourth at Las Vegas. She finished 22nd at Texas last year, a season that saw her post an average finish of 28th in 13 starts. Her best run of 2010 came at Homestead, where she qualified fifth and led four laps before finishing 19th.
Material from Sporting News was used in this article.
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