While Clint Bowyer Celebrates, Newman, McMurray And Martin Miss Chase

Richmond turned out to be as drama-free for Clint Bowyer as promised, as the Richard Childress Racing driver easily made the Chase with a top-10 run.

Bowyer actually moved into 11th place during the race (and was 142 points ahead of 13th-place Ryan Newman), leaving Greg Biffle as the bubble driver in 12th.

But Biffle was locked in after the first start-and-park driver retired from the race and was never threatened. Bowyer still had to finish the race without trouble – and he did.

"I never was points racing, because that board is hard to read for some reason," Bowyer said of Richmond's high-tech scoring pylon. "I was trying to, and I was having trouble under caution."

Oh well. As it turned out, he was better off not worrying about it.

Bowyer ran up front for most of the night and even led 33 laps – also his car number. Though his team repeatedly told him not to be nervous, Bowyer shrugged off the pressure.

"Told me about 20 times before the race started," Bowyer said. "I said, 'Who is nervous here?'"

Ryan Newman (13th in points) finished 11th and Jamie McMurray (14th in points) was 17th. Mark Martin was eliminated early in the evening.

Newman said he was "disappointed, obviously" but was glad to have somewhat of a fresh start for the remainder of the season.

"The spotlight is off of us now and we have a chance to win 10 more," he said.

During the race, Newman said the only thing he could do was hope something bad happened to Bowyer's car.

"You hope for misfortune for somebody else, even though that's not nice," he said. "That's all we could do. Try to create our own destiny, and it wasn't good enough."

Newman had a top-10 run going and lost it on a slow pit stop by his crew, which caused him to express frustration after the race.

"We came in seventh or whatever in the pits and lost four spots," he said. "Story of my season. I can't make up for what they lose me. It's disappointing. It's been like that most of the season, it just doesn't get much spotlight when you're running 15th."

As for Martin, he said there was only one focus for his team heading into the final 10 races.

"Get running better – that's it," Martin said after finishing 20th. "I think we had a great race tonight, we just didn't run good enough. ... We raced our heart out."

Martin said he and Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s team – the Nos. 5 and 88 teams for Hendrick Motorsports both missed the Chase – would probably try to "do different things and try to get one car going better."

"We've got to go through these corners faster," Martin said. "We'll keep working."