It would have been easy for Tony Stewart to split the 77 and 41 cars. That would have freed him up to make a run at a top-five.

A younger Stewart might have done just that. Then again, minutes later a wreck occurred just ahead of that 77 and 41 train -- right where Stewart would've been had he made the pass.

Race rewind a bit -- about 100 laps, to be exact -- and you'll see Mark Martin faced with a similar decision. Ryan Newman's No. 12 Ford was ahead of him. Ahead of Newman was Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and a bunch of lapped cars.

When Newman got loose in one of the turns, Martin closed the gap on him and could have made a run on the rookie. Two turns later, Newman got squirrely again -- and had Martin been there he might have been punted to the back.

The point of all this?

Both Stewart and Martin have special powers -- but these powers do not help them see the future. Neither knew what would have happened had they stubbornly steered their rigs into a more unstable pack of racing. No, their special powers help them drive, and the powers stem from the experience each has within them and within their teams.

Relying on their past experiences, each knew the conditions ahead of them, with cars packed tighter than where they were at the moment, were not as suitable to chasing down a championship. Relying on their past experiences, each has made the decisions and executed the strategies that have them remaining as the only two contenders for the Winston Cup title.

"I think Tony has changed as a driver," team owner Joe Gibbs said. "His mindset used to be, 'I just want to win every race and if I can't win it, sometimes I'll hang with it. I'll take a chance.' I think, through a process, he has watched (teammate) Bobby (Labonte, who won the 2000 title by driving smart and not posting a DNF all year) and I think that has made a big difference."

Martin's owner believes his driver thinks the same way.

"When you watch Mark, you understand why he's so good -- he doesn't make mistakes that a lot of other drivers sometimes do," Jack Roush said. "That comes with years of being in this sport and the experience that the whole team has, too."

Sometimes, that's what it comes down to. With so much competition among the teams competing in NASCAR, talent alone will not necessarily put a driver in contention for the big trophy at the end of the year.

	Martin has finished second in points three times in his Cup career.

Both Stewart and Martin are very talented -- but so are Kurt Busch, Rusty Wallace, Newman, Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon -- the pack of pilots whose title hopes fell short this year.

Some will point to these other drivers' seasons and say bad luck bit them -- and in many cases it did. But a driver can avoid situations where bad luck tends to dwell by avoiding certain spots on the track and focusing on certain things throughout the 36-race season.

"The teams that are all in the running ... are all there for good reason," said Dave Blaney, driver of that No. 77 Ford. "The split-second decisions a driver makes, it's based on experience and it's based on instinct. And those quick decisions are what can separate somebody from racing for the title or just racing."

Blaney said when it comes to making those choices, nobody's better than Stewart. But he points to another reason for Stewart being one of the best drivers of this season -- citing Stewart's tendency to run strong late in the year, as well as the team's championship experiences.

"I believe Tony's team (is) the best, top-to-bottom, of any of (the leaders) and (will) end up in front down the stretch," Blaney said. "Historically, his team has been really strong over the final third of the season, including Phoenix where he won in 1999 and Homestead (the Florida track where the series heads this weekend) where he won in both 1999 and 2000.

"Joe Gibbs' organization won the title just two years ago with Bobby and the owner knows what kind of commitment it takes from the team to win championships and they seemed to come into this season -- despite all the distractions -- with that goal in mind from the start. It will be pretty amazing if Tony can win the championship and come back from three DNFs in his first nine races, including last-place in the Daytona 500. That's a pretty good comeback."

Gibbs agrees with Blaney in that the experience the team went through in 2000 has helped Stewart and Co. focus on what they need to accomplish down the stretch.

"I definitely think it's helped Tony be around Bobby Labonte," Gibbs said. "He saw him go through the entire year. As a matter of fact, I still remember the Homestead race (in '99) when Tony was leading. He must have asked five times, 'Where's Bobby?' I think he was very conscious of that."

That experience, as well as the experience of being together as a team for four seasons, has certainly helped the No. 20 Pontiac outfit. For Martin and his Roush Racing crew, there is neither the experience of a champion within the team or a long relationship among the No. 6 crew to draw from.

And yet there is championship experience and cohesiveness among the team.

The title experience comes from Martin's 19 years in Winston Cup racing and his three close runs at the crown that fell short. Although no Roush driver has won a title, perhaps no other team understands losing as well as this one.

And though he is working with a new crew chief this year, everyone on his team has been working within the Roush umbrella for several years, now, and understand the way the four-car operation works. A large part of the legacy within the team were the heartbreaking losses Martin has suffered through the years, and much of the change that has taken place in the team throughout the late 1990s were geared toward changing that.

	“	When you watch Mark, you understand why he's so good -- he doesn't make mistakes that a lot of other drivers sometimes do. That comes with years of being in this sport and the experience that the whole team has, too. ”
		— Jack Roush

It starts with team owner Roush, who years ago decided he wanted to stop focusing so much on Martin's No. 6 Ford, expanded his operations and now oversees a free flow of thought and information between all of his cars. Each team has benefited and three of the four are ranked in the top-10 in the standings. Martin is second, Busch is third and Matt Kenseth is eighth -- just 72 points out of third. Jeff Burton is just outside the top-10.

"Really, we're one big team," Kenseth said. "I honestly have to say that every time I've asked Jack for something, and it works this way for everybody on the team, if we need something and we have a good case to support it and it's something reasonable, he gives it to us. It doesn't matter what it costs or how hard it is to get, he gives us whatever we need to race and that's my favorite thing about Roush Racing.

"If we want to build a car and put the body on backwards, if we've got a good case to support why it will be better, he'll let us build it. We have a lot of freedom to do the things we need to do to be good race teams. Sometimes we maybe have a little bit too much freedom and that's why we had years like last year, but, yet, it helps us learn to have years like this year."

Last year, none of the Roush teams contended for the title. And for the first time in 13 years, Martin failed to finish among the top-10 in points. But, as Kenseth said, the team learned from that -- and that experience is what helped them to emerge as one of the best teams of this season.

"Unfortunately, this business is cyclical -- it runs in cycles," Martin said. "You just can't stay on top all the time because of the competition level. We were at the bottom, hopefully the very bottom, of the cycle last year, and hopefully we're near the top of the cycle right now. Maybe next year we can reach the very peak of it.

"But I'm just proud of this team and very thankful for this. No matter what happens, these guys (on this team) are heroes. I have to thank them, because they've revived my career."

With 89 points separating Stewart and Martin going into the final event -- 64 points if Martin wins his appeal for the 25 points taken away from him after his car failed post-race inspection two weekends ago at Rockingham, N.C. -- it's hard to say who will emerge as the very best of the season.

But one thing is a safe bet -- the loser won't lose because of a stupid mistake.

"You look at it right now and all year we've talked about young guns this and young guns that -- and that's fine. That's good for the sport and these guys, let me tell you, these guys can race," Wallace said. "But look who's competing for the championship right now. Experience has a lot to do with being successful in this sport and Mark and Tony are proof of that."

Rupen Fofaria is a beat writer for The Raleigh News & Observer.