The 2011 Sprint Cup championship has come down to two drivers, points leader Carl Edwards and challenger Tony Stewart, as the other 10 drivers in the Chase for the Sprint Cup have been eliminated as the circuit heads to Homestead-Miami Speedway for this weekend’s season-ending Ford 400.
It’s also a head-to-head match-up between crew chiefs — Darian Grubb for Stewart’s No. 14 Chevrolet team and Bob Osborne for Edwards’ No. 99 Ford outfit.
With only three points separating the two teams, and Stewart holding the tie-breaker edge because of his four race wins to Edwards’ one, the only way either team can be assured of the title is to win the race Sunday.
Not surprisingly, in interviews this week both crew chiefs said their strategy was to go to Homestead and try to win the race.
Grubb said he’s “just trying to do the same thing we’ve been doing the last half of the season, just going out there for maximum points.
“We know if we win the race, that’s our goal. We can’t finish any worse than second. That’s what we do. We go out there for the win.”
Osborne sounded like his playbook mirrors the one prepared by Grubb.
“We are going to go there and try to have the best race car,” he said. “We are going to try to sit on the pole and try to win the race. That has been what we’ve been doing all year, and hopefully it works out for us.”
On paper it would seem as if Edwards and Osborne have the advantage at Homestead. Edwards has won two of the past three races there, and his car owner Jack Roush has won seven of the 12 Cup races run at Homestead, including six of the past seven.
Stewart also has two Homestead wins, but they came in 1999 and 2000, before the track was reconfigured. In the past six Homestead races his best finish has been an eighth, last year, but Grubb said the team’s recent successes on similar mile-and-a-half tracks bode well for the team as it heads into this weekend.
“It’s a good thing for us that we did run good there last year because that is a very similar set-up to what we’ve run good with at the mile-and-a halves this year,” he said. “We’ve hit on that set-up last year. We’ve been doing it ever since.”
For much of the early part of the season, the No. 99 team had to deal with the distractions that came with Edwards being a free agent and exploring opportunities with other teams, although he ended up re-signing with Roush Fenway Racing. On Tuesday’s NASCAR teleconference, it appeared as if Stewart’s team may have had some distractions of its own.
Asked if he was returning to Stewart-Haas Racing next year, Grubb indicated he might have other options.
“We’ll leave that to after Sunday and figure out what’s going to happen there,” he said. “Our goal is to win the championship, and we’ll decide everything else after that.”
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