As the Chase nears, Jimmie Johnson is trending downward, and Kyle Busch is trending up.
It's late Monday morning, I've finished writing the copy for "NASCAR This Week," the Gazette's syndicated page (circulated through King Features Syndicate), and in the privacy of home and thoughts, I'm starting to turn my attention to the next race, near Atlanta.
It's a big week. The regular season is winding down. It'll be Labor Day weekend near the city that's unofficially the capital of the South. From a personal standpoint, it's a big week because I'm playing music on Friday in the town of Hampton's Depot Park, from 3 to 6 p.m. The site of my concert is just a mile or two from Atlanta Motor Speedway, and I'm hoping some NASCAR fans will drop by to see if I can actually write songs as well as racing columns.
Even though two regular-season races remain, many eyes are turning to the Chase. Drivers will say they race 'em one at a time, but those with a stable place in the Chase - i.e., almost everyone presently in the top 12 - are looking ever so gently ahead, and if they're not, their teams are.
Winning, or even doing well, at Atlanta will be seen in terms of rounding into Chase shape.
At the moment, the winner of the past four Sprint Cup trophies, Jimmie Johnson, is trending downward, and regardless of how unflappable he and those around him are trying to be, this is a race Johnson needs to win. Johnson's chief problem lately has been bad luck, but in the superstitious mentality of a race team, that needs to be addressed as much as tangible problems. Johnson needs to turn his luck around.
Kyle Busch is trending upward, though much of his momentum comes from somewhere besides Cup races. In terms of the Chase, the younger Busch brother has something to prove, and as a general rule, he doesn't leave many wrongs unrighted.
Oh, and by the way, his brother Kurt has won two of the past three races at AMS.
At the moment, Gibbs and Roush Fenway are headed up, Hendrick is headed down and Childress remains rock-solid. Atlanta would appear to be a perfect place for Kurt Busch to blunt a slump. It would also appear to be a potential place for Carl Edwards to return to victory lane.
If, as Kris Kristofferson most notably suggested, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, then freedom will ring at AMS for drivers such as Ryan Newman, Kasey Kahne, David Reutimann, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Juan Pablo Montoya, Martin Truex Jr., Joey Logano and maybe a few others. They are all unlikely to make the Chase.
Nothing beats those lowdown, not-gonna-make-the-Chase blues like winning a race anyway.