The Chase Shuffle

It looks as if we may see this just about every week.  All but two spots in the Chase changed with the race at Dover, Newman and Busch stayed the same, everyone else either moved up or down.

Jimmie Johnson tamed the monster with teammate Kyle Busch on his tail in a green-white-checkered finish. 

The question on everyones mind during pre-race, was were teammates not in the Chase going to play a role, would they get in the way to help a teammate?  Everyone basically knows that teammates will and can play a role during a race, but when it comes down to the win, how will it play out?  Would there be "team orders"?  According to Kyle Busch, there were no team orders and he proved it, he got teammate Johnson little loose before the last caution and also on the green-white-checkered.  To quote Busch - "I know he's a Chase (driver), but it doesn't matter much to me. I'm trying to race as hard as I can to win."  And that he did, he was on Johnson's tail, got him a little loose, but not enough to chase him up the track to get by.

Rusty Wallace had a good run, finishing third and moving up to second in the standings only seven points behind Johnson.  Yay Rusty!  Too bad there weren't more laps to go since his car seemed to have gotten better the longer they ran, same with Martin, but he didn't have enough for Johnson.  Still a great run for him for his final race at Dover.

Johnson moved up five spots in the standings to first, while point leader Tony Stewart fell four spots to fifth with a eighteenth place finish.  Kenseth had the worst luck of the Chase drivers with two cut tires, one putting him in the wall and relegating him to a thirty-fifth place finish.

Points now -

1. Jimmie Johnson   Leader
2. Rusty Wallace        -7
3. Ryan Newman       -12
4. Mark Martin          -21
5. Tony Stewart        -23
6. Greg Biffle            -23
7. Jeremy Mayfield    -81
8. Carl Edwards         -103
9. Matt Kenseth        -124
10. Kurt Busch            -170