The Backstretch Blog: Over. Did Some One Say Over?

October 25, 2010|By HEATHER WILLIAMS | Eyewitness Sports

When Denny Hamlin walked into the Martinsville Media Center Saturday, sat down an exclaimed. "Who said it was over? Told you it wasn't over," you have half expected him to go into a Bluto from Animal House diatribe about nothing is over until we say it is. And while I would expect that Hamlin knows the Germans did not bomb Pearl Harbor, the Chase for the Sprint Cup has gone a little Animal House.

Now the wildest wild card of them all, NASCAR's toga party in so many ways, Talladega is next up. And we've got ourselves a points race. Hamlin is just 6 points back from four time champ Jimmie Johnson, with Kevin Harvick just 62 points back.

"Honestly it is the only Chase race that we have that you can't necessarily control your destiny," Hamlin said after Sunday's race. "We could go out of there and come out with a 50, 60 point lead or be that far behind. You just don't know. All we can do is run that race the way we always do."

What all three always seem to do, is run pretty well at the SuperSpeedway, though Harvick seems to be the best restrictor plate racer of the bunch. And while a lot has been made of Hamlin getting past tracks he has had a tough time at in the past, Martinsville has been tough for Happy. So getting past it with a top 5 finish certainly has him headed to Alabama.

"No one gave us a chance to even run anywhere towards the front," said Harvick Sunday. "So it's nice to come here, get the finishes we feel like we deserve, that we've run well over the last few years, just hadn't got the finishes to show for it."

And before you write Johnson, wake up and realize, he's Jimmie Johnson.

"Happy to still be leading. Wish the margin had gone the other way," said JJ. "Denny won the race, closed it up. We'll buckle down, go to work the next four. Happy to still be leading. Wish the margin had gone the other way. Denny won the race, closed it up. We'll buckle down, go to work the next four."

Four races that should be fun because to quote the great poet Bluto again, "when the going gets tough....the tough get going."

And good, hard, tough racing is what I expect, and hopeful what we will get. Now who's with me?

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