Which driver has advantage for Chase title?

But Earnhardt’s win factored little into the championship round, which will play out next weekend at Homestead with Harvick, Busch and Martin Truex Jr. joining Jeff Gordon in a race for the Sprint Cup.

Harvick has been there, done that: See how he won at Homestead-Miami Speedway a year ago when he was also part of the Championship 4 mix. Last Sunday’s 14th-place finish at Phoenix was his first result outside of the top-10 during the Chase.

As fans cried foul over inconsistency – a refrain that continued Sunday at Phoenix when Kurt Busch was flagged for jumping the start of the race – many drivers wondered how rules and code and respect had become so blurred. Truex came in 14th.

This was the year that Kurt Busch got a waiver to race for the title even though he was suspended for the first three races of the year for allegedly committing an act of domestic violence.

The 2004 champion entered the event needing nothing less than a victory to advance to the Championship Four and appeared to have the speed to do it, qualifying second and leading final practice on Saturday afternoon.

“You always want to win when you have a auto like we did today, but I’ll take it again next week”.

“We have overcome a lot of obstacles… and… a lot of odds”, Truex said. “Well, I just about rivaled that race with that run we had at Talladega, but we didn’t win, so nobody’s ever going to remember that one”. Finally, after the rain stopped and NASCAR’s Air Titans had dried the track, the green flag waved almost seven hours later.

Instead, a downpour followed and the race was called with 93 laps left to the scheduled finish. Earnhardt inherited the lead from Harvick when he beat the yellow out of the pits. Johnson was the first driver off pit road during the caution.

Earnhardt’s crew chief, Greg Ives, an engineer by trade, had a very pragmatic take on the two races. “We’ve also had a few mishaps, but fortunately they weren’t big enough to eliminate us”. “I’m just really proud of what we’ve accomplished this year and to be able to be putting really good weeks together was really awesome….” A competition caution was called at Lap 40. He led most of the remaining laps.

Race leader Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a different opinion about the weather. And sometimes you’re on the right side of it and sometimes you’re on the wrong side of it.

Johnson is not in the championship chase, but he has five wins in 2015.

Earnhardt was trying to stave off elimination with a win, but when Harvick refused to cede position as his engine failed, he triggered a race-ending accident that bounced NASCAR’s most popular driver from the playoffs. Busch was penalized on the start of the race for beating polesitter Jimmie Johnson to the line.

He worked his way back toward the front, reaching the top 10 near the race’s midpoint.

Carl Edwards drove around in a holding pattern as the rain started to fall, ready to wash away his Chase chances at any second.

Earlier Sunday, rain began falling around 1:25 p.m. ET and a fleet of NASCAR Air Titan track dryers began circulating the 1-mile track approximately 20 minutes later as precipitation began to taper off. – Jeff Gordon on going to Homestead for the final race – and final hope for a fifth Sprint Cup championship – in his career. When asked on NBC-TV about Gordon’s contributions to the team and to NASCAR as a whole, team owner Rick Hendrick stated, “He’s done so much for our organization and for the sport in general”.

NOTES: Kevin Harvick came into Sunday’s race as the victor of the four most recent races at Phoenix global Raceway…. Joey Logano’s only shot at advancement in the Chase for the Sprint Cup was to win at Phoenix….