iNSIDE SCOOP: Scramble City

If you’ve looked at the calendar lately, you’ll notice that it’s getting on toward September. After this weekend at Kentucky Motor Speedway, there will be 10 races to the Chase, nine to the deciding event at Richmond.

In other words, it’s time for panic among those drivers and teams that aren’t already in the Chase qualifying positions.

If your name is Jeff Gordon, you’re spitting kittens right about now. Oh, sure, there’s plenty of racing left before the 12 Chase drivers are decided, but you have to wonder. He’s had chances to win and hasn’t, and he’s been out to lunch as many times as he has been a contender.

As it stands today, he’s 12 points out of the top 10, in 13th place behind teammate Kasey Kahne and Paul Menard. Kahne has a victory and one of the wild-card spots. Menard has shown he’s capable of running well enough to make the Chase.

 Ditto for Tony Stewart, who had a promising run at Sonoma cut short when he crashed with Jeff Burton on the treacherous Turn 11. He was running in the top 10 and finished 28th. That knocked him from 10th to 15th in the standings, 20 points behind Martin Truex Jr., who won the Sonoma race.

He has a victory and is the final wild-card right now, but that could change as soon as Saturday night.

Joey Logano, who has won a bunch of Nationwide Series events at Kentucky, is 14th in points. Kurt Busch is 17th, Ryan Newman 18th. It’s not a slam-dunk, by any means. Burton is 20th, and New Hampshire is coming up. He could win there.

Denny Hamlin has about run out of time for a Chase push, though he could get hot at the right time. He’s 25th in points, 133 out of the top 10. That’s way too much ground, so he’ll have to take the wild-card route. 

That is slightly less onerous, but he’s 83 points out of the top 20 with no victories. He has to win a race and log four or five top-five finishes to get that done. He might have to win two races. 

The Earnhardt Ganassi duo of Jamie McMurray and Juan Pablo Montoya has been wicked quick lately, but with nothing to show for it. McMurray won the pole at Sonoma, but failed to lead a lap; Montoya was running second and ran out of gas a lap from the finish. He wound up 34th.

Marcos Ambrose is 22nd in the points and has a chance, if he can recapture the magic of earlier this spring, and so does Aric Almirola, who is 16th at the moment. Rookie Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is 19th in points, and he could be a player too.

Short of a rocket-assisted race or two, Danica isn’t likely to make the Chase either, but she wasn’t expected to just yet.  

It could be all scrambled up by this time next week, so stay tuned!