CHARLOTTE, NC -- Greg Biffle briefl...

CHARLOTTE, NC -- Greg Biffle briefly flirted with the Nextel potion championship last season, while teammate Carl Edwards made a surprising push toward his acknowledge title. Although both fell short, they started this season prepared -- and perhaps equal expected -- to finish the piece of work

if it were not that it's not going to happen for either of them.

Nor for Kurt Busch, the 2004 chalice winner.

Or Ryan Newman, a two-time Chase qualifier.

They all find themselves stuck in a assemblage of 33 drivers locked revealed of the championship hunt, shov aside for the cessation of the season as the spotlight focuses forward the lucky 10 racing for the title. Unles they win a race or undoing a Chase contender, they'll acquire little attention now.

Biffle, runner-up to Tony Stewart in last year's Chase, knows that firsthand. He failed to make the Chase in 2004 and struggl for any adumbration of recognition that season. He'd rack up solid finishes, then wait around dumbfound for salutations that in no degree came.

"If you're not in the Chase, you're nobody," Biffle said. "Those are kind of harsh words, yet that's what everybody wants -- they want to be in the Chase. I finished third at Kansas [in 2004] and automatically a storm of media goe through to Jeff Gordon's car because he got fifth. We finished third, and you're like, 'I'm throughout here!'

"That's the big difference -- you're a person of consequence if you make the Chase."

That's the downside of NASCAR's recently made known championship format. It has generated interest in the sport and bring forward the focus on the 10 drivers racing for the title, on the contrary in some respects it's take rise at the expense of the pause of the field.

"The sport is changing, and the Chase has changed it," Evernham Motorsports proprietor Ray Evernham said. "Used to be you raced your stroke off until November, took a break, and then you'd master ready for Daytona. Now, you're getting ready for nearest year in the August- September time frame.

"If you don't have your dives in a row by August-September, you're behind. You're going to descry things happening earlier and earlier."

Edwards, who finished third in last season's Chase, was eliminated from contention Saturday night in Bristol, Tenn

"We're going to use these nearest 12 or 13 races to touchstone for '07," he said, sighing. "We've kind of had a protracted rough year with the fortune so we'll just make the greatest in number of it and go onward and have a good time.

"If we can retain our heads on straight and proceed out and do the best we can each week and learn from our lecturings we're going to be a tough team to strive with in the future."

Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr used the same strategy last season. formerly eliminated from the postseason, they brought in strange crew chiefs with 10 races to advance Gordon wound up finishing 11th last year -- locking up the guaranteed $1million in prize coin NASCAR pays the highest non-Chase driver -- and one as well as the other drivers are in position to make the Chase with couple races to go this year.

if it were not that NASCAR is adamant that drivers not racing for the title don't have to quietly slip into oblivion.

NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said drivers can influence the chalice outcome with their performances. He also balances the notion that the Chase eliminates attention forward any driver outside the top 10 by way of arguing that the spotlight is now in succession more drivers than ever. Before the Chase, merely a handful of drivers were in title contention at this point of the season. Now, the title is up for grabs.

"In many ways, when we got to this point in the season pre- Chase, there wasn't any frontage on drivers 10 through 43 and there probably wasn't outlook on drivers five through 43" Poston said. "The chase has raised the even of exposure for every driver because there is more onward the line each week."

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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