Stewart would rather watch Chase unfold

LOUDON, N.H. – The view Sunday from inside Tony Stewart’s No. 20 Chevrolet was an improvement over last week, a runner-up finish following a dismal 18th that knocked him from championship contention.

But the two-time titlist said he would have preferred another vantage point: on top of his 18-wheeler in the infield, sipping a beer and watching the Chase for the Nextel Cup contenders without the stress of interfering in their championship dreams.

“If you have 10 guys racing each other, they should have their own deal,” Stewart said. “You know if you get in between (Chase) guys, you cost them five points. The 33 guys that didn’t make the Chase shouldn’t have to feel that way if they have a good day and are able to pass guys.

“If I could change NASCAR for a day, I would have the guys that didn’t make the Chase run our own 200-mile race, then the top 10 guys could have their own 200-mile race. At least that way, you don’t have teams that didn’t make the playoffs playing against teams that did. The Chase is exciting; there’s nothing wrong with it. It just puts some of us in some awkward positions.”

The Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway again illustrated the pitfalls of holding a playoff without elimination rounds. For the third consecutive year in the opener of NASCAR’s 10-race championship battle, Chase contenders were caught in accidents triggered by drivers unburdened by title ramifications.

Jimmie Johnson suffered heavy damage to his No. 48 Chevy after a collision with Sterling Marlin and plummeted from second to ninth in points with a 39th. Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Busch dropped six spots to 10th in points after tangling with Jeff Green on lap 5.

“There needed to be a little more give and take there,” Busch said. “I obviously took more, and he didn’t give as much, so there was a collision.”

The title bids of Johnson (now 139 points behind leader Kevin Harvick) and Busch (in a 146-point deficit) took major hits. Though nine races remain, neither driver expects to gain enough ground to contend unless others face similar problems.

That’s partly the reason Stewart joined Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon, Kyle Petty and several others who have lobbied for NASCAR to create a separate points system for Chase drivers to lessen the impact of a poor performance in the final 10.

But Harvick, who is the Chase front-runner after a dominant win Sunday, isn’t comfortable with a concept that would award the same points to the 10th-place Chase finisher for placing anywhere from 10th to 43rd.

“Our sport has always been built around consistency,” Harvick said. “If you have something go wrong and finish 43rd, there is no reason you should get 10th-place points.”