And Then There Were Two
November 7th, 2011By: Drew Hierwarter
I know, I know, Kevin Harvick, Matt Kenseth, and Brad Keselowski still have a mathematical chance to win the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship, but the truth is that that, barring something really strange, either Tony Stewart or Carl Edwards will win it.
Keselowski is 49 points behind leader Edwards, slightly more than one race, with only two races left to make up that deficit. It would take a complete meltdown of all four of the teams ahead of him to get him to the top. That’s just not going to happen.
And everybody behind Keselowski, including “Five Time” Jimmie Johnson, is out of it. But don’t cry for the 48 team. Five consecutive championships in NASCAR’s highest division is something that has never been done before and may never be done again. They’ve come to the inevitable end of that amazing run and there’s no shame in not winning number six.
For Harvick and Kenseth the path to the championship is steep, not impossible, but steep and getting steeper. The Stewart/Edwards 1-2 finish at Texas yesterday should be proof enough of that.
Tony Stewart has won half of the chase races so far, four of eight, and has pulled up to just 3 points behind leader Edwards.
Edwards only win this season came way back at Las Vegas, the third race of the season. Since the start of the chase, however, Edwards has been more consistent than Stewart. His 11th place finish at Talladega being the only race he finished outside the top ten.
Stewart, on the other hand, has finishes of 25th at Dover and 15th at Kansas to take some of the steam out of the four wins and lower his average finish for the chase to 7.4 verses Edwards average for the chase of 5.6.
Carl Edwards has 14 starts at Phoenix with one win and an average finish of 13th. He has run at Homestead seven times and scored two wins and his average finish there is 5.7.
Tony Stewart has 19 starts at Phoenix with one win and an 11.7 average finish. But he also has several wins in open wheel competition there before he became a NASCAR star and he calls Phoenix one of his favorite tracks. (Of course, the track has been changed now so all that could be meaningless)
Homestead is a different story for Tony. He has two wins in his 12 starts there and a 12.4 average finish.
So we go into the final two races of the 2011 season with two drivers, driving for two of the top teams in the series, separated by a mere three points, to decide who will be the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Champion.
Regardless of how things actually turn out, no matter if you are a Stewart fan or an Edwards fan, the final two races of what some people are calling the best NASCAR Sprint Cup season in recent memory, will certainly be interesting.