Chase standings following the Good Sam Club 500 at Talladega Superspeedway:
1. Carl Edwards (finished 11th Sunday): He stuck with his Roush Fenway Racing teammate Greg Biffle all afternoon and although he didn't get the finish he would have liked, he was happy to leave Talladega with his Chase lead boosted by nine points.
2. Matt Kenseth (14 points behind, finished 18th): Although he faded at the end of the 500, he still moved up one spot in the standings. "It was disappointing to run in the front all day and then finish where we finished, but we made it through so I guess the damage could have been worse," he said.
3. Brad Keselowski (-18, finished fourth): His fourth top-five finish in the Chase allowed him to slice seven points off his deficit with the points leader. "We're still in contention and we have a good shot at winning this championship," he said.
4. Tony Stewart (-19, finished seventh): He wound up without a drafting partner at the end after a crash with his teammate Ryan Newman, but he still managed to reduce his points deficit with the leader by five markers. "I screwed up and got out of sync with Ryan [Newman] and crashed him. And after that you just had to pick up whoever you could pick up," he said.
5. Kevin Harvick (-26, finished 32nd): He managed to avoid problems in the first five Chase races, but a wreck at Talladega saw him drop three spots in the standings and lose 21 points to Edwards. Still, it could have been much worse. "Obviously that wasn't the day we wanted, but the way the rest of those guys raced, it didn't devastate us," he said.
6. Kyle Busch (-40, finished 33rd): After a runner-up finish at Charlotte, the regular-season points leader appeared poised to make a Chase charge. But a crash at Talladega left him in a precarious position in the standings. His crew chief, Dave Rogers, vowed to not give up. "We're going to try to lead every lap and win every race from here on out and wherever that puts us in the points at the end of the year, we'll take it," he said."
7. Jimmie Johnson (-50, finished 26th): He needed a good finish at Talladega to rebound from his Charlotte crash, but he didn't get it. Neither did he give up on the season. "We'll just keep fighting," he said. "I want to finish as high as I can in the points. If it isn't the championship, I want to finish as high as I can possibly finish."
8. Kurt Busch (-52, finished 36th): After keeping his car out of harm's way for 175 laps, he was involved in a nasty crash. "Our championship hopes are done just because of this two-car Talladega draft," he said.
9. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (-74, finished 25th): The five-time Talladega winner had an atypical day as he lagged back rather than run at the front of the pack. But when it came time to go, he was mired too far in the rear to make a charge. "We were in a good position to make our move inside those 20 laps to go and we just kept having cautions and that sort of hurt our strategy a little bit," he said.
10. Jeff Gordon (-82, finished 27th): He was in position to bid for the win at the end, but he said his potential drafting partner, Trevor Bayne, backed off at the last minute, supposedly due to orders from the Ford camp. "I thought it was a no-brainer," Gordon said. "But I probably should have known better."
11. Denny Hamlin (-84, finished eighth): He scored his second straight top-10 finish in the Chase, but it came too late to help him make a run for the title. He spent most of Sunday trying to find a drafting partner. "The best I can describe it is we were without a date to the prom so I was just hitting on everyone's mom," he said.
12. Ryan Newman (-88, finished 38th): His bad luck in the Chase continued as he spun in the entrance to Turn One while running in tandem with his Stewart Haas Racing teammate Stewart.
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