Sometimes, Chase for Cup isn't exactly as it seems

LOUDON, N.H. -- They were calling him the "iceman." Jeff Burton had dodged disaster yet again, this time coming back from a flooded engine and a lap down to salvage a top-10 finish at Lowe's Motor Speedway. He had kept a firm grip on the Chase for the Nextel Cup for four weeks, and had five more to go to a title. His quiet resilience worried his competitors. Nobody expected him to wilt.

"You can't break him," Dale Earnhardt Jr. said.

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But the next week, and a blown engine at Martinsville, did. Burton's 2006 postseason is Exhibit A in the unpredictable nature of NASCAR's playoff season, where the point margins are so thin that they obscure reality. Burton was the class of the field over the first half of last year's Chase, winning the second event at Dover and pounding out top-10s in two of the next three weeks. He seemed in such control that other drivers were wondering publicly if he could be beaten. And his lead was a whole 45 points, which turned into a 48-point deficit eight days later when his black and orange car began to trail white smoke on the short track in southern Virginia.

Wonder where the pressure of the Chase comes from? Not in trying to reach Victory Lane. Not in trying to keep pace with other playoff participants. It comes from minimizing failure, from attempting to wring a ninth-place finish out of a 10th-place car, from drivers like Burton beating themselves up after flooding the engine, wracked by the knowledge that his ninth-place finish at Charlotte could have been just a little better. The thing carries with it the mental strain of a concrete block hanging from the end of a strand of 40-weight fishing line.

"Last year was a great experience for us," Burton said, "even though when we look back on it, we feel like we may have let one get away."

Someone will undoubtedly feel the same way after this season's Chase, which opens Sunday at New Hampshire International Speedway. The 12 drivers eligible for the title are separated by all of 60 points, the difference between finishing first and placing 11th in a given Nextel Cup event. The margins are so tight, something as seemingly innocuous as a few lug nuts left loose on a pit stop -- as Greg Biffle can willfully attest -- can cost a driver a championship. Something like an engine failure or an early race accident can be catastrophic.

Unless of course you're Jimmie Johnson, the anti-Burton. The Hendrick Motorsports driver started last year's Chase with a busted cylinder that cost him track position, and eventually found himself tangled in somebody else's wreck. He left Loudon in ninth place, 139 points off the lead, and buried by every expert with a NASCAR hard card. As Burton took control, Johnson foundered, never finishing any better than 18th. The perennial Nextel Cup bridesmaid seemed destined to fall short of the championship once more.

Again, it was all an illusion. Johnson stormed back with a monster finishing kick, never finishing worse than second in five consecutive races, and easily clinching his title with a ninth-place result at Homestead. Burton wound up seventh, an otherwise satisfying comeback season tinged by thoughts of what might have been. Less than 100 points separated the top four drivers. Had the season been extended by a race and Johnson blown an engine, someone else may very well have celebrated in the South Florida night.

That's the way it is in the Chase, where everything is not always at is seems, and the pressure is greater than anyone outside of it can understand. New Hampshire is but a stage-setter, a place where only one winner -- Kurt Busch, in the inaugural Chase in 2004 -- has gone on to win the whole thing, where Kevin Harvick reached Victory Lane last year and wound up fourth overall. The Chase itself is a 10-week grinder that devours its own participants, as evidenced by the look on the faces of drivers who have done well but not well enough.

This isn't the time of year to get conservative. From here to Homestead, it's all offense, all the time. The Chase demands nothing less.

"I go into it with the same way I did last year: understanding that the only way to win a championship is to get points on the board and get as many as you can every single week," said Burton, who enters this year in 10th, 50 points behind Johnson. "We don't come here with a thought in our head that we've got to do everything in the world to win this race, anymore than we did last week or the week before. If we can't win, we've got to try to finish second, and if we can't finish second, we've got to finish third. You've just got to get as many points as you can every week. That's all you can do."

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.