Sam Sharpe-US Presswire

Kevin Harvick, top, has been running as well as just about anyone recently.

RICHMOND, Va. -- The hottest driver heading into the championship Chase isn't Jimmie Johnson, although Sunday's victory at Richmond International Raceway was his second straight.

It's not Kyle Busch, who has a Sprint Cup Series-high eight wins and leads the point standings with 5,080.

It's not Carl Edwards, who has three wins in the past six races and is second in points with 5,050.

The hottest driver hasn't won a race since the 2007 Daytona 500.

Can you say Kevin Harvick?

OK, so mathematically it doesn't add up. Edwards' average finish over the past six races is 5.1. Harvick's is 5.5.

But Harvick has a better average finish than Busch (10.5) and Johnson (10.3) over the same time span. And Harvick has six straight top-10 finishes. None of the others has more than five during that stretch.

So case closed. Harvick is the hottest driver.

Kind of.

"This car has been really good over the last three months," Harvick said.

Good, but not great.

The one thing Harvick hadn't been able to do before Sunday was lead laps. He led 80 on a beautiful post-Tropical Storm Hanna afternoon, almost equaling his total (88) in the first 25 races.

"I like to lead laps, but I haven't been a big lap leader," Harvick said. "I seem to lead a few laps at the end -- if we win. It's not like we are really dominant. That's just kind of our MO and how we function."

Perfect example: Harvick led only four laps when he won the Daytona 500. The last time he dominated a race was the 2006 Chase opener at New Hampshire when he led 196 laps en route to the win.

He may need that kind of performance on Sunday, starting the Chase 80 points behind Busch, 50 behind Edwards and 40 behind Johnson. Most of the so-called experts have written off everybody outside those three who have won 18 of 26 events.

But if Harvick can somehow keep the momentum he has and finish the next 10 races with an average finish of 5.5 he'll be right in the thick of things -- unless Johnson duplicates the amazing 5.0 average of a year ago.

That may be too much to ask of Harvick, though. His average finish at the eight tracks NASCAR revisits during the 10-race Chase is 17.3 this season. His only top-10 was a seventh at Atlanta.

But he's done well at the 1.5-mile tracks, and there are five of those in the Chase. He also has two Richard Childress Racing teammates -- Jeff Burton and Clint Bowyer -- in the Chase field to help him.

"I felt like our 1.5-mile program is very good right now," Harvick said. "For whatever reason, that's been our weakness before and right now that's our strength.

"So hopefully that continues, and we can keep that going forward on the big tracks, because that's where you're going to have to be good because there's so many of them."

OK, so maybe Harvick isn't the hottest driver entering the Chase. But, as Tony Stewart said, he has a chance because he's in it.

"It's great to finally get all that over with," Harvick said of making the field. "We've run well the last few months and have to keep that up and pick it up a notch and make something happen.

"Glad that we've been able to be competitive over the last few months, but now we need to be more competitive as we go forward."

-- David Newton

Nationwide Series: Bowyer tightens title grip; Logano and Zipadelli get some practice in

RICHMOND, Va. -- It wasn't quite the dream weekend Clint Bowyer seemingly was weaving Sunday night while he was dominating the Emerson Radio 250 Nationwide Series race at Richmond International Raceway.

While Bowyer's main goal was accomplished under sunny skies at RIR -- when he clinched a berth in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup -- it appeared as if that was simply going to be part of a doubleheader to remember. Already the leader in the Nationwide Series championship standings, Bowyer securing his second win of the season in the series looked to be a mere formality.

Until he was passed by both Carl Edwards and Scott Wimmer, that is. Still, the third-place finish, coupled with a 21st-place effort for Brad Keselowski, moved Bowyer still closer to at least one championship this year.

Edwards did move into second in the standings, but sits 207 points back heading into an off weekend. Keselowski fell 279 points back.

And while the focus was on the top three drivers and Bowyer's domination atop the standings, a move that may eventually pay big dividends for another team went largely unnoticed.

Coming off a second-place finish with Tony Stewart in the Sprint Cup race, crew chief Greg Zipadelli stuck around for the Nationwide race and called the shots from atop Joey Logano's pit box. The resulting seventh-place finish wasn't a big deal by Logano's already lofty standards, but it was the first time the two worked together during a race.

Next year, of course, Zipadelli will be guiding Logano's rookie Cup campaign, so any chance to work together now is a bonus.

"I'm just helping out because of the situation that our Nationwide guys are in and it gives me an opportunity to hear and make some adjustments on the car and see how sensitive he is to adjustments and stuff," said Zipadelli, who worked with interim crew chief Doug Hewitt as Dave Rogers serves an indefinite NASCAR suspension. "It might give us a little bit of a head start on next year. It's a learning curve and we are just trying to accelerate it as fast as we can."

Outside of working with Zipadelli, Logano wasn't all that enthused with his ninth top-10 in 12 Nationwide Series starts.

"We started off decent and then the brakes started pulsating. I got really loose into the corner and we tried to fix that. Then that would make me tight in the center -- that would make me loose off [the corner]," Logano said. "We fixed that.

"At the end it wasn't that bad, we were just slow and I don't know why. Besides that, we had good pit stops. We gained spots every time we came in, so that was good."

In the end, though, Logano's first chance to run a race with his future Cup crew chief will likely be something he'll remember more than where he finished.

-- Mark Ashenfelter

Craftsman Truck Series: Hornaday starts chipping away at Benson's lead

Kevin Harvick Inc. crew chief Rick Ren crunched the numbers, figuring there may not be any more big swings in the Craftsman Truck Series title chase. With Johnny Benson leading the points on the strength of four wins in six starts coming into Saturday's race at Gateway (Ill.), Ren figured his man, defending champion Ron Hornaday Jr., would have to chip, chip away at a 119-point deficit.

"Going into this race I needed 15 points a race [over the final nine events]," Ren said. "We got 25."

Hornaday and the KHI No. 33 team dropped their points deficit back to within double digits and put another win in the books, leading 113 of 160 laps on the 1.25-mile oval at Gateway International Raceway to serve a reminder that Benson's Bill Davis Racing No. 23 Toyota isn't guaranteed the title.

While Benson had streaked in recent weeks, Hornaday faltered. A second-place finish at O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis was a disappointment, a fifth at Nashville was a missed opportunity and a 24th-place night at Bristol, Tenn., was a complete disaster after a crash including KHI teammate Jack Sprague.

For Gateway, the team built a new Chevy, qualified second and grabbed the lead immediately.

"That kind of shows this team doesn't get down," Ren said. "It was a real good day for us and lets everybody else know at the racetrack that we're not rolling over, we didn't roll over last year and we're not going to roll over now."

Ren ordered four new tires for Hornaday on a Lap 104 pit stop, the final stop for the lead pack. Six other trucks took two tires in a track-position grab, the only way they could contend for the win. Benson led for a half-dozen laps and pole sitter Dennis Setzer took a turn up front, but Hornaday's march couldn't be stopped and he led the final 30 laps.

Benson finished third, making this year's race nearly the opposite of last year, when the No. 23 won and Hornaday finished second. It was Benson's eighth top-four finish in the past nine races.

Setzer held on for second in a weekend that lifted the spirits at Bobby Hamilton Racing-Virginia. The team parked its No. 4 Dodge, driven by Stacy Compton, and laid off 15 employees earlier in the week as financial constraints forced the team to focus on one truck, Setzer's No. 18. A pole and a runner-up finish helped validate that move.

Germain Racing's Todd Bodine and Sprague rounded out the top five. Marc Davis, making his Trucks debut at age 18, finished 16th for Randy Moss Motorsports.

-- John Schwarb