Rick Minter's OBSERVATIONS

Big winner won't claim title

As has been the case many times in the past, a racing circuit's dominant driver won't be the champion.

That's true in the Nationwide and Sprint Cup Series this year.

Kyle Busch's Nationwide victory at Lowe's Motor Speedway last Friday was his ninth in the series. He also leads the Cup circuit with eight victories and has three more in the Craftsman Truck Series.

But he's not a title contender in any circuit. He told reporters in his winner's interview at Lowe's that he's still not sorry he didn't run the entire Nationwide Series schedule.

"It's a lot more fun to not have to worry about points and just go out there and race for wins," he said, adding that he did spend some time during the race pondering where he would be in the standings had he run the whole schedule. "It's a lot easier to go out there and race everybody and all the competitors for wins instead of having to concentrate on a particular guy or a particular couple guys and seeing what they do week in and week out.

"It's probably no different in the Chase, but at least this year I don't have to worry about racing for the championship anymore. We can just worry about racing for wins and getting up there to get a couple more before the year's out." Goodyear tries to get it right

Goodyear, which has come under criticism for the poor performance of its tires at several races this season, was back at Indianapolis Motor Speedway last week testing tire compounds for that track.

Mark Martin, who participated in the test, said during a teleconference that he believes the tire he tested will last longer than the ones used at the track earlier this year. Those tires lasted only a handful of laps, forcing NASCAR to throw numerous caution flags to prevent crashes.

"It's lasting at least twice, maybe three times the distance already," Martin said. "So kudos to these [Goodyear] guys for what they've learned, and they'll use that, like I said, to anticipate our needs going forward."

Kasey Kahne was equally complimentary.

"I would think we would easily be able to run a fuel run right now with the tires we're looking at and hopefully we keep looking and finding better stuff," he said. "Goodyear has done a good job to really help the situation."

Underdog role

Jeff Burton said after winning at Lowe's Saturday night that he's in an entirely different position than points leader Jimmie Johnson and the other pre-Chase favorites. That's because most observers didn't expect much from his team going in.

"I truly believe that those guys who won all the races and were the guys that everybody picked ... those teams are in the position that anything less than a championship and their year's not going to be successful," he said. "We're not in that case. Our deal is we're just going to go have fun. Nobody's picked us."

He said he's not going to get swept up into continuous points-counting.

"We're paying attention to it, but we're not going to get caught up in it," he said. "If we don't win the championship, our year's not a failure. Whatever happens, we look at each other at the end of the race, we all know we put a lot of effort into it. If we don't do well, we'll go back and try to do better next time. That's how we're going to do it till the end of it."

SPRINT CUP STANDINGS

1. Jimmie Johnson 5,878; leader 2. Jeff Burton 5,809; behind: -69 3. Greg Biffle 5,792; behind: -86 4. Carl Edwards 5,710; behind: -168 5. Clint Bowyer 5,693; behind: -185 6. Kevin Harvick 5,671; behind: -207 7. Tony Stewart 5,650; behind: -228 8. Jeff Gordon 5,633; behind: -245 9. Kyle Busch 5,552; behind: -326 10. Dale Earnhardt Jr. 5,524; behind: -354 11. Matt Kenseth 5,518; behind: -360 12. Denny Hamlin 5,498; behind: -380