In a Hole: Ragan loses ground to Bowyer in Chase quest

David Ragan stumbled on Sunday night in his underdog bid to become this year's Cinderella story in the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship.

So he goes to Richmond this week with a clear game plan: he's 17 points behind 12th place Clint Bowyer, and Ragan has to finish four or five positions ahead of him in Saturday night's race to make the Chase.

"We dug ourselves a bigger hole," Ragan said after finishing 13th and losing a few more points to Bowyer in the race for the last playoff spot.

"But we just didn't have the speed all night, and battled poor track position. We got it decent there at the end. If it had been a 600-mile race, maybe we could have picked up a few more spots.

"We're in the same position at Richmond -- we've just got to outrun everybody else.

"They can tell me where Clint is, and where everybody is, but you're driving as hard as you can, and certainly we didn't want to take any unnecessary risks.

"We've just got to have more speed, and we've just got to beat them on the track. We can't count on their misfortune; we've got to make sure we're in the top two or three at Richmond.

"We've got to have more speed."

Sunday night's surprise, in a sense, was Greg Biffle, Ragan's teammate. Still winless, Biffle made the strongest bid he could to tackle winner Jimmie Johnson, and clinched a spot in the playoffs, which will begin at Loudon, N.H., next week.

"Jimmie was phenomenal," Biffle said in amazement. "We see that happen every once in a while -- a guy gets it set up right, gets running good … we saw it in the Nationwide race (Kyle Busch's runaway Saturday night) too.

"My guys, what a phenomenal job. So I feel bad. I let them down. They were the fastest guys on pit road, and I've never had that before in my life. It feels pretty good to beat everybody off of pit road time and time again.

"Jimmie wasn't beating me on engine, that's for sure. He just beat me around the corners just a little bit."

Biffle and Greg Erwin, his crew chief, may finally be turning things around. "This is the best night we've had all season, besides Darlington," Biffle said.

"And the pit stops, man, I don't even know what to say -- We beat everybody out every time. I've never had that happen before.

"They've been working on the pit crew, shifting guys around, and it was pretty spectacular.

"I'm just real happy to get myself a spot in the Chase this year. Jimmie was just a little bit faster here.

"We've gotten way better, as an organization and as a team. Thanks to Robbie Reiser (the former Matt Kenseth crew chief, now shop foreman).

"They made a commitment at the beginning of the year to shift some guys around, to put together the best teams we could. And it's made an unbelievable difference...."

Matt Kenseth, still vying for a playoff spot, was not that happy with his fifth-place finish Sunday. "We ran pretty good, it's just that these things are pretty frustrating," he said of the winged car. "You can't ever really go anywhere.

"Those top bunch of cars start there and run there all day. It's just hard to do anything with these cars, so it gets a little frustrating.

"But we had a great day on pit road, we were able to pass some cars, and we got a good finish."

Carl Edwards failed to make it three wins in a row. "It's great to be disappointed as hell with sixth place," he said. "That's wonderful … but we really wanted three in a row.

"I think when the track changed, we weren't quite on top of how our car was going to handle in the dark. Sometimes you hit it, and sometimes you miss it. We just missed it."

Team owner Rick Hendrick may face more pressure in the coming weeks than his teams, because adding Dale Earnhardt Jr. to the already successful Jeff Gordon-Jimmie Johnson roster hasn't been a panacea. In fact, some wonder if it's been too much, upsetting the delicately balanced chemistry at Hendrick Motorsports.

After all, Gordon is winless, and Earnhardt's only win was one of those gas-mileage gambles.

Gordon? "We want to perform well," Gordon said. "We want to win races, we want to be competitive -- it doesn't do any good to be in the Chase if you're not competitive enough to win races and battle for the championship."

■ Mike Mulhern can be reached at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.