After 25 races, it's make or break time

Four spots are still up for grabs in the 10-race championship shootout.
By HANK KURZ JR.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
RICHMOND, Va. -- After 25 races, it comes down to this: Four spots up for grabs in NASCAR's 10-race championship shootout, nine drivers with a shot and one of the raciest tracks.
"This is the make or break race of the year for us, so we're going to have to pull out all the stops in order to put ourselves in contention to win," Kevin Harvick said of Saturday night's Chevy Rock & amp; Roll 400 at Richmond International Raceway.
The race marks the end of the 26-race championship qualifying series, and will be followed by an all-new 10-race shootout among the top 10 drivers in season points.
A week ago, Harvick was in eighth place going into the race at Fontana, Calif., but a 28th-place finish sent him tumbling to the end of the line of contenders, 56 points behind No. 10 Mark Martin, and forcing him into a decided change in strategy.
Harvick is now 15th in points and will have to beat Jamie McMurray, Bobby Labonte, Dale Jarrett and Jeremy Mayfield -- along with at least one driver who will start Saturday night's race in the top 10 -- to gain a spot in the championship chase.
"We're on the aggressive now and they're the ones who need to be looking over their shoulders, not me anymore," Harvick said. "The time is now to go for it all."
Making up ground
Like Harvick, other drivers needing to make up ground at Richmond view the racy 3/4-mile oval as an interesting place to wrap up the qualifying series.
McMurray, 11th in points and only 25 out of the top 10, was running well here in the spring before tangling with Joe Nemechek and being relegated to 38th place.
"That's the thing about Richmond," McMurray said. "It's a short track and you can be caught up in someone else's mess and have your night end early."
For Mayfield, this race is a chance to undo a number of mistakes earlier in the season that combined to put him 55 points out of 10th going into the finale.
"We've just got to go in there and race and do whatever it takes to win the race and get all the points we can get," said Mayfield, who is 14th. "Whatever the consequences are, we'll have to deal with them later and race aggressively and do whatever you've got to do to win. I don't care about anybody around me."
Jarrett, who is 43 points behind Martin, thinks expectations that driver etiquette will be forgotten are misguided, at least until the last few laps, because aggressive driving can hurt the aggressor's chances as much as his victim's.
"People want to talk about taking chances and doing this and that on the race track," he said. "You can't put yourself in that position. One spot might make a difference here in the last five laps of this race and you might have to do something at that point if it might be the difference between getting in or not."
Still, he said, the same unwritten rules of decency will apply. That means a nudge aside from a faster car is acceptable and expected, but causing a crash is not.
"As far as literally taking somebody out, no, that's not the way to do it," he said. "That's not the way I've ever done it and I won't start now because of this."
Clinching spots
Once the race begins, six drivers will have clinched spots, No. 7 Kurt Busch will have all but clinched one and the remaining contenders will be just 76 points apart, all hoping for a massive reshuffling like the one that took place at Fontana.
After that race, Harvick and Labonte fell out of the top 10, Kasey Kahne and Martin moved precariously in and Ryan Newman climbed from 10th to eighth.
After McMurray, Labonte is 36 points behind Martin.
Mayfield, for one, expects an exciting prelude to the championship chase.
"I think it's going to be a great track for it," he said. "A short track, Saturday night. I'm sure there will be a full moon out and tempers flaring at the end of it."
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