Live-Blogging Atlanta: Tony Stewart Wins As Chase Picture Becomes Clearer

Shane Wilson stood in the emptying Atlanta garage area with a red plastic cup in hand, his smile the only brightness in the dim light.

Wilson, Clint Bowyer's crew chief, oozed relief after his No. 33 team finished seventh in the penultimate regular season race, which helped solidify Bowyer's 12th-place position in the Chase standings.

Bowyer now leads 13th-place Ryan Newman by 117 points, which means he'll easily make the Chase with a top-25 run at Richmond next week.

"We definitely struggled today, so to get out of here with a seventh-place finish, we're really pleased with that," Wilson said. "And probably a little bit lucky."

At one point in the race, Bowyer had fallen to 18th place – behind several of the drivers who were in pursuit of his Chase spot – and was struggling with an ill-handling car (to put it nicely).

During the worst of his problems, Bowyer radioed to tell his team "I can't drive this, man! Got to fix this thing!"

"I know I'm sounding like a bitch," he said during the next caution, "but I'm just trying to stress the magnitude of things. It's bad."

Wilson had Bowyer spend extra time on pit road so the team could fix a problem near the quarterpanel, then kept making the adjustments that allowed Bowyer to escape with a vital top-10.

"That is absolutely what we needed," Bowyer said. "...Not what we wanted, but darn sure what we needed."

Bowyer's team is on the bubble in the first place because the racing luck it found in Atlanta hadn't been with the team for much of the summer.

Wilson noted there we plenty of occasions in which Bowyer ran in the top 10 all day, only to finish 20th.

"We've earned that (good) luck, you know what I mean?" Wilson said. "We gave up a lot of points in the summer. ... So this is actually a nice day where we ran 18th and finished top-10."

Chasing Bowyer next week will be Newman, Jamie McMurray and Mark Martin, although their chances are all very slim.

Martin remained mathematically alive for a Chase spot, but his team isn't even worrying about it.

"I'm not really concerned about the Chase," Martin's crew chief Alan Gustafson said. "We've got to run better than 21st, regardless."

Martin fell 15th in points (147 behind Bowyer), while 14th-place McMurray is 128 behind.

CHASE POINTS PICTURE

11) Greg Biffle (+161 inside Chase)

12) Clint Bowyer (+117 inside Chase)

13) Ryan Newman (-117 from Chase)

14) Jamie McMurray (-128 from Chase)

15) Mark Martin (-147 from Chase)

Ryan Newman lost 18 crucial points after Kasey Kahne bumped him late in the Atlanta race as a retaliation for an earlier incident.

So after parking his car, Newman stood and waited for Kahne to pull up to the team hauler so the drivers could discuss what happened.

Newman leaned into Kahne's window and began a conversation, which continued after Kahne climbed from his damaged No. 9 machine.

The talk ended with smiles and no threat of physical violence – much more amicable than Newman's recent clash with Joey Logano.

"That's racing, man," Newman said. "He and I are friends. We're good. ... He was frustrated and tried taking it out on me. I asked him if next time we could just talk about it first, that's all."

Kahne was upset because Newman got into the back of him late in the race, which cause the No. 9 car to get loose and collide with Kurt Busch. Kahne was third at the time of the incident but instead finished 32nd.

"...I feel like he lost us about 20 spots today," Kahne said. "He said he got hit from behind and that forced him into me, so that's racing, but either way, we're the one that took the big shot there."

Newman said he bumped Kahne "a millisecond" after Kyle Busch bumped Newman's No. 39 car, which got Newman slightly out of shape.

But Newman had been trying to assist Kahne by pushing him past Kurt Busch, he said.

"It was me trying to help him out, and it causes accidents once in awhile," he said.

Kahne said the two drivers were "fine" despite the incident.

"We don't have an issue with each other, it's just that when you get racing sometimes it gets you mad," Kahne said. "He lost about four spots from me rubbing him a little bit and I lost about 25 or 30 from him rubbing me, so he got me a little better."

Indeed, Newman dropped from fourth to eighth after the contact, which is worth 18 points. Will Newman, in 13th place, need those points to make the Chase?

"We mathematically have a chance, and for an engineering guy, that means something," Newman said. "I can only try my hardest. That's what I did tonight. Can't expect to make it all up in one shot."

Newman also had an incident with Greg Biffle, which he explained by saying Biffle cut across his nose.

Biffle took partial blame but added, "He certainly didn't cut us any slack. He could have cut us some slack and let us go there."

Still, Biffle wasn't worried about his Chase chances – the driver only needs to beat one driver in Saturday's Richmond race to make NASCAR's postseason. With start-and-park drivers factored into the equation, that shouldn't be a problem.

"We're pretty much locked in," he said.

Photo: Jeff Gluck / SB Nation

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Hendrick Motorsports team owner Rick Hendrick isn't anticipating any changes atop his No. 88 team's pit box.

Hendrick said Saturday afternoon that his plan is to keep crew chief Lance McGrew and Dale Earnhardt Jr. paired together heading into the Chase and beyond.

"We make decisions as things develop during the season and at the end of the season, and right now we've got a game plan and we're sticking to it," Hendrick told a group of reporters. "... Our plan is for those two guys to be together."

McGrew has come under fire from Earnhardt Jr. fans eager to place blame for the source of their driver's struggles, which will result in him missing the Chase for the second straight season.

Some fans who listen to the radio chatter between Earnhardt Jr. and McGrew believe the driver-crew chief relationship isn't healthy based on sometimes acrimonious back-and-forth.

But Hendrick said he feels the two are getting along just fine based on what he's seen behind the scenes.

"I'm actually pretty happy with the chemistry there now," he said. "Maybe some of you guys don't agree. But I'm around them in the shop every week, I'm in the Tuesday (debrief) meetings, I talk to Dale and I talk to Lance and I've talked to them both after they've been testing."

Earnhardt Jr. agreed with the team owner.

"No, I don't think that's something we need to be discussing at this point," he said of a possible change. "... I'd rather stay out of that argument, myself. It's never a fun situation. I like working with Lance."

Earnhardt Jr. said the chemistry with his crew chief is "good," but acknowledged the team needs to improve its performance.

"We need to start producing some speed really quickly," he said. "...We've been testing trying to get better for Richmond and a couple other places coming up."

Hendrick categorized a possible crew chief change as unwise at a time when the entire organization isn't up to speed and the problem can't be pinned on a single individual.

"If you miss the Chase and just decide that you're going to change something just to change it, then I think that's a mistake," he said. "I've never tried to do that. I keep my options open, but at the same time, if the driver and the crew chief are getting along and they're working together and they're trying, that's all I can ask for."

Hendrick said his four teams are trying very different setups this weekend in an attempt to hit on something for the Chase (only two of his four cars – Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson – will likely make NASCAR's playoff this year).

The owner said he wanted to be winning races and dominating again, but the lack of results showed how competitive NASCAR is.

"We're not happy with where we are as an organization, but we're working on it," he said. "Nobody's blaming anybody and nobody's giving up."

After Todd Bodine said Kyle Busch was "driving dirty" in the Truck Series race Friday night at Kentucky, Busch said Saturday afternoon that Bodine's comment was "kind of low, but that's how Bodine is."

Busch, in his first comments about the Truck race (other than the ones he gave Bodine when he confronted the race winner in Victory Lane), said there was a big difference between racing hard and racing dirty.

"I feel like I'm a hard racer and an aggressive one, but not dirty," Busch said. "Dirty is when you run into the back of someone on the straightaway and put them in the fence.

"I was three lanes up the racetrack, and he chased it all the way up to me. You watch the replay, I'm in the third lane – I was trying to give him room. ... If I spin him out and he spins me out, what good is that for me? That doesn't do me any good. I actually had the courtesy to think about him spinning out, and he did."

Bodine was attempting to pass Busch on the low side for the lead in the latter half of the race when he spun out. He took tires and fuel and ended up not having to pit again – an unintentional strategy that wound up winning the race.

But Bodine credited Busch's "driving dirty" for the win, prompting Busch to pay a visit to Victory Lane.

"I was in the hauler changing and saw him spouting his mouth off on TV," Busch said. "I went straight over there and confronted him right then and there. I had to (leave), so when was I going to do it?"

Busch said he didn't have the chance to speak his mind to the media, since he wasn't required to make a trip to the infield media center (required of the top three finishers), but added, "I don't need to battle in the media. I'll just beat him on the racetrack."

Afterward, Busch hitched a plane ride to Atlanta with Bob Germain – the owner of Bodine's team. Busch said the ride wasn't awkward and that Germain understood Busch's position.

This season, Busch has failed to find full sponsorship for his Kyle Busch Motorsports team after beginning the season with high hopes of running multiple trucks in every race.

He said he's been paying for much of the team out of his own pocket, but feels he can challenge Bodine for the owner points title, which helps explain why he raced Bodine so hard. Busch's team is now 82 points behind Bodine.

Busch also wondered aloud about NASCAR's caution calls (and non-call, in this case).

"It's kind of funny," he said. "We're at Chicago (last week with Busch leading) and with three to go, they throw a caution for nothing, right? Then yesterday, no caution in the last 50 laps, you know? ... You didn't see a caution with three to go to bunch the field back up."

Busch said he saw tire chunks flying off of Ron Hornaday's blown tire and said he spoke with two other drivers who saw the same thing.

"Whether or not (the chunks) landed on the racetrack or the apron, I can't answer you that," he said.

Have you seen Jeff Gordon's car this weekend? Gordon's paint scheme for Atlanta looks like it was designed by a 3-year-old.

That's because it was. Gordon's 3-year-old daughter, Ella, is responsible for the paint scheme on Gordon's No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports car, which is being sponsored by the Jeff Gordon Children's Foundation.

"The guys in the shop tell me that we better run really, really fast in this car, because it's got a lot of pink on it and it's bright," Gordon said as reporters chuckled. "Not a car you want to run in the back with."

Gordon's car goes along with a month-long campaign by his foundation to encourage fans to help fight pediatric cancer. More than 13,000 children are diagnosed with cancer every year.

To design "Papa's Car" (which is written above the door instead of Gordon's name), the four-time Cup champion took Ella to the Concord, N.C. offices of NASCAR artist Sam Bass, who helped with the design.

"We tried to explain what she was doing and I don't think she really grasped the concept," Gordon said. "But you lay some paper down in front of her with an outline sketch of a race car and give her a bunch of paint brushes and things, and that's all it takes.

"That's pretty much what she did. She kept wanting to put her hands in the paint, so finally we let her do that."

The result is a mixture of colors, along with brush strokes and hand prints. Bass put the finishing touches on the design.

It's certainly not a conventional race car paint scheme. So as Gordon said, he'll need to go fast to avoid embarrassment.

"On the flip side, I can't wreck this car," he said. "She's not going to want to see me wreck a car she designed."

Photo: Jeff Gluck / SB Nation