By Bruce Martin

PA SportsTicker Contributing Editor

KANSAS CITY, Kansas (Ticker) – For all but a few drivers in Sunday’s NASCAR Nextel Cup LifeLock 400 at Kansas Speedway it was not a good day to be in “The Chase.”

It actually started one day earlier for defending series champion Jimmie Johnson, who won the pole on Friday but crashed his car in Saturday’s practice. He had to start the race in a backup car, which meant he had to start at the back of the pack.

But for the other 11 drivers in NASCAR’s manipulated championship “playoff” Sunday’s race was almost a curse to those in “The Chase.”

Just 29 laps into the race, Chase driver Kyle Busch was drilled from behind by the man who is going to replace him at Hendrick Motorsports, Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Busch was incredulous when he watched his crew repair his wrecked Chevrolet before he returned to the track for a 41st-place finish.

“I gave him a lane to try to go on the outside because I knew he would have a run off the corner but I got run into the back of and spun out down the back straightaway for absolutely no reason,” Busch said. “It was a pretty stupid move on his part. I’m sure these guys he will be working with next year don’t appreciate this because they have a championship they can win this year and he doesn’t.

“I don’t know what he was thinking. He ran me over for no reason whatsoever.”

Busch believes his chance at winning “The Chase” ended in this race.

“Yeah, right,” said Busch, who won Saturday’s Busch race at Kansas. “Last year we didn’t come back. We got to 10th and ran 10th. Hopefully we can keep going the way at the first of the year and get back on track.

“It’s three in with seven more to go so we’ll have to make it up somehow.”

Earnhardt, who isn’t in The Chase, took responsibility for the incident.

“We put the No. 5 (Busch) car out,” Earnhardt said during Sunday’s lengthy red-flag because of rain. “That was an accident. I want to apologize to his fans and their team and Kyle. That was a bad mistake on my part.

“I just run into the back of him. I was screaming as I was going by for him to save it, but he couldn’t gather it up. It was my fault.”

That was just the beginning of many whacky moments to the “Chasers” in this race.

Jeff Burton was sent to the back of the field for pulling the fender out on his Chevrolet during the first red-flag session. That is a no-no in NASCAR’s rule book. He later ran out of fuel and finished 36th, 11 laps down to the leader.

Martin Truex Jr. and Matt Kenseth were part of a wild five-car crash on the first lap after the race was restarted because of rain during the second red flag period. Truex finished 38th and Kenseth 35th.

Tony Stewart, who entered the race just two points behind Jeff Gordon in the Cup standings, had a damaged fender from that incident and when the race restarted, the front tire started to smoke from the fender rubbing on the rubber.

Ultimately, that tire blew up in the third turn, triggering a crash when Kurt Busch ran into the back of Stewart’s slowed Chevy, which spun into the path of Carl Edward’s Ford.

Stewart finished 39th and Edwards was 37th while Busch was able to continue in the race and finish 11th.

And Denny Hamlin can pretty much give up on winning the Cup after he was involved in a crash with Paul Menard and Jamie McMurray. Hamlin was 12th in points entering the race and stays in that position, falling even further behind, trailing by 248 points.

That left Clint Bowyer, who finished second, third-place finisher Jimmie Johnson and fifth-place Jeff Gordon as the only drivers in “The Chase” who were unscathed in this race.

But even Bowyer could fall into that category after non-chase driver Greg Biffle appeared to drop off the pace in a race that ended under yellow because they believed he was not maintaining “pace car speed” heading to the checkered flag.

Three cars actually passed Biffle because they believed he had run out of gas but NASCAR awarded the win to him any way.

“When the caution came out on lap 207, the 16 was in the lead and the field was frozen,” said NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said. “The race ended under caution and the 16 (Biffle) was declared the winner. As you all know, there is no passing under caution. If the 16 did not keep pace, by rule cars under caution need to maintain a reasonable speed, which the 16 did. If they hadn’t, then that car would not have won the race.

“In this instance, the 16 maintained a reasonable speed and won the race. There is no passing under caution. In the opinion of the tower, the 16 did maintained a reasonable speed, which is different than the pace car speed. The judgment comes from the tower, not from the other NASCAR competitors.”

So what does this all mean?

Gordon, who entered the race first in the standings is now second, six points behind defending Cup champion Johnson. Bowyer is third, 14 points of the lead.

Stewart, however, falls from two points out to 117 points behind in fourth place. Kevin Harvick is fifth, 126 out followed by Kyle Busch, 136 back; Edwards, 142 out of the lead.

Truex is eighth (158 points out of the lead), followed by Kurt Busch (177), Burton (186), Kenseth (219) and Hamlin (248).

Other than Johnson, who takes over the points lead, the biggest winner was the man who may have been the winner of the race, according to some, and that was Bowyer. He started “The Chase” 12th and is now within striking distance of the lead.

“I think we’re taking this seriously,” Bowyer said. “We have to stay focused on what we are doing and the sky is the limit. We’re proving ourselves. This is our time. We’re peaking at the right time and I’m getting confidence along the way. Things are really going good. We’re moving forward.

“We knew going into it we’d have to step up and answer the call and we’re doing it.”

It was nearly a perfect homecoming for the driver from Emporia, Kansas if Biffle had actually run out of fuel and not been declared the winner.

“The bottom line is no different than the entry level of racing, it’s consistency that wins championships,” Bowyer said. “You have to run up front but you can’t win races and then have DNFs (did not finish). Our strong point has been to get out of races without a catastrophic day.

“Knock on wood we can keep that from happening.”

There were nine other drivers in Sunday’s race who wish they could have made that statement.