NASCAR Nationwide Series

Of course, the Nationwide Series doesn’t have a Chase, at least not yet. So what do drivers who are in the second half of the top 10 focus on over the last nine races?

“Our focus doesn’t change,” says Trevor Bayne, driver of the No. 99 Aaron’s Dream Machine Toyota for Michael Waltrip Racing, who is currently seventh in the driver standings. “I think the Cup guys, their whole game plan changes (when the Chase begins). For us, we do what we’ve been doing for the last 10 races, which is to try to get better every weekend.”

“Just good finishes and hoping other people don’t have good finishes,” says Steve Wallace, who pilots the No. 66 5-hour Energy Camry for Rusty Wallace Racing and is currently eighth in Nationwide driver points. “There’s not a Chase, so there’s a big spread through the points for a lot of guys.

“It’s just been a real roller coaster ride this year. When we seem to put something together, we always seem to run really well. We’ve just got to capitalize when guys have bad days. We’ve unfortunately lost 200 points the past four weeks on sixth (Kevin Harvick). We’ve just got to hope they wreck and tear some stuff up.”

Indeed, while it may seem cruel to root for others to have misfortune on the racetrack, it’s the nature of the beast towards the end of a 35-race season with no reset in the point standings.

Neither Wallace nor Bayne harbor any illusions of overtaking leader Brad Keselowski, who is 1,181 points ahead of Bayne and 1,212 points clear of Wallace, but both would certainly like to finish as high as possible. Both drivers are within 400 points of Paul Menard, who is fifth in the driver standings, and while catching even him over the final nine races is a bit of a long shot, it’s a goal both of them are shooting for.

“It’d be a great thing being in the top five,” Wallace says. “All the top-five drivers get honored there at the banquet. We finished seventh last year and it looks like we’re probably going to finish sixth or seventh this year, but we’re not going to give up.”

Bayne would love to get himself into the top five in the final driver standings and the No. 99 team inside the top 10 in owner points. As it currently stands, his goal for the owner standings looks readily attainable, as the No. 99 team is 11th, just 28 points out of the magic 10th-place position. But in a way, he’s already reached one major goal for this season.

“At the beginning of the year, I said my goal was to be top-five team by the end of the year,” says Bayne. “At that time, I was thinking for us to finish in the top five in points. But now looking at it, we are a top-five team every weekend. In the last 10 races, we’ve scored the third- or fourth-most points of anybody, Cup drivers included. I think that’s a pretty awesome accomplishment.”

More important than their points position is the fact that both Bayne and Wallace have shown the ability to run up front on several different occasions this season.

Bayne took three consecutive pole positions for midsummer races at Gateway International Raceway, O’Reilly Raceway Park and Iowa Speedway, and has finished inside the top five four times this season. Wallace owns 11 top-10 results from the year and matched his career-best Nationwide result with a fifth-place run at Gateway in July.

“It’s definitely a lot less stressful when you’re running good,” Bayne says. “Everything seems to fall into place. The team surrounds you a lot better, they’re pumping you up and everybody seems to be a little bit less stressed out about everything. Good runs bring fun and enjoyment, that’s for sure.”

Bayne has definitely had more good runs than bad over the past several weeks. But if there were a Chase for the Nationwide championship, it would have started last weekend at Atlanta, and it wouldn’t have done him any favors as he finished 24th.

It wouldn’t have helped Wallace, either, as he retired early from the race with a mechanical problem and wound up 35th, allowing Bayne to overtake him for seventh in the championship standings. In Wallace’s mind, however, his position in the point standings is definitely secondary to his main goal.

“I’d finish 30th in the point standings to get a win,” he says. “I don’t care about the points.”

What about Bayne? Would he rather finish fifth in the driver standings or get his first race win and finish somewhere further down the order?

“I don’t really know that we could get to fifth in the point standings,” Bayne says. “I know that it’s hypothetical, but if I finished fifth in the points, that’s because we had a lot of strong races. That’s a good thing to have. If you can run top five, top three every weekend, and if you can get six of those in a row, sometimes that’s better than a win.

“But having said that, I would love to get that first win, too. That’s kind of tough for me. I think if we run top five every weekend, we’re going to get that win.”