Everett, Wash.
Published: Saturday, August 16, 2008

NASCAR notes: Allmendinger making gains on track

Also items on Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch and the Stat of the Week

By Mike Harris
Associated Press

 From the beginning of his NASCAR Sprint Cup career, A.J. Allmendinger has had to face the pressure of qualifying on speed to make every race.

Until now.

By virtue of four straight finishes inside the top 20, the former open-wheel star has moved into the 35th spot in car owner points, meaning he is guaranteed a starting spot in Sunday's race at Michigan International Speedway.

"For me, it won't be the anxiety of, 'Oh my God, we have to make this race.' It's a big deal for at least one week," the driver of Red Bull Racing's No. 84 Toyota said.

Allmendinger began his Cup career at the 2007 Daytona Speed Weeks, but a crash in his qualifying race kept him out of the lineup for the season-opening Daytona 500. It was four more races before Allmendinger finally managed to qualify for a race field.

He has managed to qualify for 31 of a possible 53 races since that difficult start and was even replaced by veteran Mike Skinner for five races earlier this season as the team tried to evaluate where it stood.

Allmendinger wasn't jumping for joy about being out of the car, but he paid close attention to what Skinner did and said, and it has paid off with noticeable improvement, culminating with last Sunday's 11th-place finish at Watkins Glen. That was only his 14th start of the season and the finish was second only to his 10th-place run last month at Indianapolis.

His last four races, which include finishes of 13th at Chicago and 19th at Pocono, also coincide with the arrival of Jimmy Elledge as his crew chief. The chemistry was there from the start.

"Jimmy has been around a long time," Allmendinger said. "He knows what he's doing."

So, even though he is not yet signed for 2009, things are looking up for the 26-year-old Californian.

"But we're only in (the top 35) by eight points, and I don't want to say we're good," Allmendinger said. "All it takes is one little mistake, mechanical or driver error, and we're right back out. Friday will definitely be a much better day this week, but we want to keep building on the momentum.

"I don't want to just be in the top 35. I want to keep looking forward."

NO LAME DUCK: If anybody was expecting Tony Stewart to phone in the last half of his final season with Joe Gibbs Racing, they don't know the two-time Cup champion very well.

Despite being winless this season, Stewart is seventh in the points — a strong candidate to make the 12-man Chase for the championship — and has three of his eight top-five finishes in the last three races, including two consecutive runner-up finishes heading into Michigan.

"I am a lot more comfortable with the momentum we have going right now," Stewart said. "I think the last two weeks has shown how focused our team is at the job at hand. It makes me proud of our guys and proud of our whole organization."

Stewart will move to his own Stewart-Haas Racing team next season as an owner-driver. But, first, he has some business to finish up for longtime employer Gibbs. And that means getting into the Chase.

Stewart has a 138-point cushion over 13th-place Clint Bowyer with just four races remaining until NASCAR's postseason begins.

"You have to be cautiously aggressive," he said of the battle to make the Chase. "You still have to keep in mind that if you take a chance and don't finish a race, that you'll lose a lot of points, and the 10 bonus points (for a win) you thought you might gain for the Chase won't happen either.

"You have to do the same things that have gotten you to Victory Lane in the past. You can't afford to take too many unnecessary chances."

MICHIGAN MAN: Some people think that Kyle Busch is a racing machine, who thinks about little else.

But the Cup series points leader, winner of eight Cup races, six Nationwide races and two Craftsman Truck races in 2008, does have other interests, and he can hardly wait for the college football season to begin.

"My brother (Kurt) moved up to Michigan years ago to run in the Craftsman Truck series and he went to a Michigan game," Busch said. "He bought me a Michigan sweat shirt and sent it home for me. I never really paid attention to college football until then, but I became a Michigan fan.

"Not too complicated of a story, but it's fun to be able to follow them when I have a Saturday afternoon off in the fall. I was lucky enough to be able to go to their practice last fall and get to know a few of the guys. You always respect people who are as competitive as you are, and they certainly have the same drive to win that I do."

HE SAID IT: "There is a lot more stress in making the Chase than there is in the Chase itself. Most of these tracks in the Chase, you have been to once already this season and have a baseline of what to expect. There are good tracks for us in the Chase, like Lowe's Motor Speedway and Talladega." — Tony Eury Jr., crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is a solid fourth in the season points.

STAT OF THE WEEK: While drivers in the first five positions in the Chase for the championship are virtually a lock to make the stock car playoffs, the other seven spots could all easily change.

Only 148 points separate sixth-place Jeff Gordon and 13th-place Clint Bowyer, and it's even tighter between ninth-place Denny Hamlin and Bowyer, separated by just 83 points with Greg Biffle, Kevin Harvick and Matt Kenseth in between.

Bowyer is just 22 points behind 12th-place Kenseth. Kenseth and Jimmie Johnson are the only drivers who have made the Chase each of the four seasons the format has been in place.

STAT OF THE WEEK II: Roush Fenway Racing drivers have won 10 times at Michigan International Speedway, second only to the Wood Brothers' 11 victories on the 2-mile oval.

But the Roush Fenway dominance is much more recent, with its drivers having won six of the last 13 at the Brooklyn, Mich., track.
© 2009The Daily Herald Co., Everett, WA