Texas Tussle

With all the metal spent at Martinsville, how can Texas Motor Speedway compete?

Coming off a bruising, battering, change-at-the-drop-of-a-hat outing at Martinsville, which earned a .8 percent increase in TV ratings and left many long-time observers of the sport quite breathless, how is Texas going to top it?

If I know Eddie Gossage, and I do, he’ll find a way.

There’s a points battle in the final three races, and for once it doesn’t really include Jimmie Johnson. No offense to 48 Nation, but that’s a good thing. It’s a classic young-vs.-old battle, with the (relatively) young Carl Edwards against the wily (experienced and a tad more mature than he used to be) Tony Stewart.

That’s going to be a good thing for the sport, because there’s likely to be a different champion hoisting the Cup at Homestead. Edwards could have won three NASCAR Sprint Cups, Stewart has already won two. Edwards burst on the scene out of the woodwork; Stewart was groomed for success at the top levels of motorsports since the age of five.

Edwards is affable, an excellent spokesman and a poster boy. Stewart is irascible, much in the way of his hero A.J. Foyt, is also an excellent spokesman and the equivalent of the young kid in the decal you see on the windshields of trucks at NASCAR races…the one who is hosing down a particular driver’s car number.

At least that’s who he tries to portray himself as. The truth is somewhat different.

Both are passionate and can be excitable. Both will drive through a brick wall to get a checkered flag first, and both have experience in a points battle. Stewart has been better racing from ahead, Edwards has always raced from behind.

Now the roles are reversed. Edwards is the leader, and you know what Shakespeare used to say, sitting around the campfire on Talladega Blvd. and sipping some of Gentleman Jack’s finest: uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

Stewart’s victory at Martinsville, where he beat the odds and Jimmie Johnson, woke him up. This was the same guy who, a couple of weeks before the Chase began, said his team didn’t deserve a spot in it.

All he’s done since is win three of the seven races and cement himself as the challenger no one wants to see in the rear-view. Edwards, who won 30 races ago at Las Vegas for his lone victory of the season, has been steady, which really means that he’s having the kind of year that his teammate Matt Kenseth is famous for having.

It also means that the change in the point system really hasn’t changed things that much.

Edwards’ average finish in the Chase is something like 6.4; Stewart’s is 8.3 or thereabouts. With three victories to Carl’s none, and starting out just three points behind him, Stewart should be ahead. He’s not. Consistency is still the king.

Texas is more Edwards’ cup of tea, a fast 1.5-mile where Fords have long ruled the roost. At Texas in the spring, Edwards was third and Stewart 12th; at Atlanta on Labor Day, Stewart was third and Edwards fifth, so it’s anyone’s ball game.

Quick note: I’ve seen lots of races at Martinsville, and I was absolutely riveted to the view from the press box on Sunday. Racing is all about competition; this was a brawl, a donnybrook, an old-fashioned woodshed trip.

I loved every minute of it.

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