Upside Down, Inside Out

Perusing the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings yesterday, I kept turning it upside down.

Case in point: the drivers in third and 10th in the standings after two races. Brad Keselowski, the sheet told me, was third, 11 points off the leader, Tony Stewart. Jimmie Johnson, ol’ Five-Time, was 10th.

Huh?

Johnson is 18 points behind Keselowski, 29 behind his long-time nemesis Stewart. Talk about upside-down.

“We needed to get through the races where we didn't feel like we were very good," Keselowski said after finishing second behind Tony Stewart on Sunday at New Hampshire. "We're just executing very well, and it's another good sign, good momentum and good mojo.”

Speaking of mojo, Five-Time and his team might have misplaced theirs.

“We didn't have a car like we thought we would,” Johnson said Sunday after his 18th-place finish. “It just didn't have the speed, and some pit calls didn't work out our way. But we'll take this one on the chin and go on to the next one.”

That isn’t to say he isn’t capable of going on a binge that nets a few race victories. He’s done it before, but this year he hasn’t seemed to have had the killer cars and killer instinct he’s had the previous five.

It got to a point Sunday where he was ticked with crew chief Chad Knaus, and showed it on the radio. That was before he and Kyle Busch got into it on the track.

“Yeah, he was being a bit stubborn,” Johnson said of Busch. “But it was racing. It wasn't like he was trying to wreck me or anything. When we got together the second time, it whipped the wheel out of my hand and bent something in the steering up front. It was just the end of a bad day.”

Several moves over the past two months have transformed Keselowski's season. He's 11 points behind Stewart in first and only four points behind Kevin Harvick in second.

“It's funny because 10 races ago we left Loudon [N.H.] 23rd in points,” Keselowski said. “Who would have ever thought we'd be third in 10 weeks?” Had it not been for a crash in testing at Road Atlanta, he might not have been able to do that. After that crash, he won two more races and put together a string of top-fives that vaulted him to 11th in the points before the Chase started.

Johnson, meanwhile, didn’t win a race in the final 12 leading up to the Chase. He’ll need to fix that if he’s thinking of carrying off No. 6.

"Anything is possible," he said. "Obviously, we need eight great ones from here. We can't run 10th anymore. We need a bunch of W's. My optimism is still high.”