Drivers battling for the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship are in their third elimination round of the Chase. They have three more races — two in which to lock into the championship race then the winner-take-all finale — before the champ is crowned.
They are 33 points races into the season. Mentally, it's been a long and wearing year. So how do those eight drivers battling for the title now deal with that aspect of racing?
It varies, driver to driver. Jeff Burton, formerly a Chase-contending driver and now an NBC analyst, understands this.
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Pressure impacts everyone differently. That's evidence by the varying results, and reaction to those, among the drivers still in contention for the title.
Burton competed against most of these Chase drivers throughout his career and was teammates with both Matt Kenseth and Kevin Harvick. A points leader past midway in the Chase in 2006, he knows how that can affect a driver. And that was before the elimination format, or the points system that lessens the impact of a setback in a race.
"Some drivers love it," Burton said. "Relish it. I think Harvick, although he doesn't want to be in the position, I think when Harvick gets in the position that he's behind and has to make something happen, I think that's when he's most comfortable. I think that's when he lets himself be himself and I think the stress of that is a good thing for him."
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Harvick, for his part, claimed he headed to Texas focused only on his team and its effort — not his fellow contenders. He was in trouble after the first race in each segment, and then rallied with a win in the second to advance. This weekend, he faces the same scenario after struggling in the Round of 8 opener at Martinsville.
"I don't really get into drama and excitement," Harvick said. "For me, it's really about being intense in our own little bubble. I know, for us, it seems like there is more to navigate than there was last year just for the fact that we've had so many things go wrong up to this point."
Not everyone is that way.
"I think Matt Kenseth sleeps good at night no matter what," Burton said. "I think that his personality is such that the pressure doesn't bother him. He looks at every race as a race."
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Jimmie Johnson? He's "been in this situation so many times, I think he's comfortable in that situation."
Drivers who haven't won a championship, though — pressure is different for them.
That is even more true, perhaps, for Denny Hamlin. After all, he's been here before — but it wasn't easy. In 2010, Hamlin entered the season finale with the points lead (this was before the current iteration of the Chase that reset points entering that race), and then endured a nerve-racking news conference with fellow contenders Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick appearing to rattle him.
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Hamlin struggled in the finale, was caught up in an early crash and went on to finish as the series runner-up. It's his best finish to date despite being a perennial Chase contender.
So what is his mindset like at this point?
"I think Denny Hamlin, who we saw come so close several years ago at Homestead, at that point in his career I think that moment was a little too big for him but I think he wants to prove to himself, and the world, but primarily himself, that he's ready for it now. I just think it's different for everybody," Burton said.
Burton understands that.
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In 2006, he was leading the standings going into the race at Martinsville Speedway. He had been the points leader after each of the four preceding races.
He was heading to a series of tracks where he had run well. He was in really good position to win the title.
Then his engine failed at Martinsville. Immediately, things changed.
"There's good stress and there's bad stress, right? I think, for me, the year that we were in the Chase and were leading the points up until three races to go or whatever it was, I didn't get stressed out until it went bad," Burton said.
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When the engine failed, it was a situation where no one had done anything wrong. Something outside of their control had happened. The impact was immediate. Under the 2010 points system, Burton entered that race leading by 45 points — and left it trailing by 48. He would never come closer to the leader.
"Then the pressure mounted," he said. "Then it was like, 'OK, we've got to go recover and if we don't recover, it's over.' And so for me, when it wasn't going well was when I felt the pressure, when I was in Matt Kenseth's position or Kyle Busch's position or Jimmie Johnson's position, those were positions that I was completely comfortable with. I enjoyed that pressure.
"I struggled more with the pressure when things weren't going well. I didn't mind the big moments."
That remains true for some of the Chasers this year.
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And where Texas will be a real test. It will especially be so for the drivers at the bottom of the Chase group — Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch. The scenario is different for each, too. Harvick has been in this position over and over. Edwards is so far out that he can afford to gamble heavily in seeking a win in the next two races.
Busch? His situation is a bit different.
"You never know what's going to happen when you go into the next race," Busch said. "You go business as usual, but not too much stress."
His situation is perhaps the epitome of just how different the pressure each of these Chase contenders faces can be. While it is not unique, his reaction to it over the course of Sunday's race could be.
"That's where Kurt Busch, who has done a masterful job, in my opinion, of taking what has appeared to me to be a 14th-place car on a consistent basis and he and (crew chief) Tony Gibson have done a really good job of keeping that speed in contention to win a championship," Burton said. "But now the pressure is on them. How are they going to handle that? They're behind, they're not fast enough.
"What unravels from that? That's when it really gets hard."
Green flag for Sunday's Texas AAA 500 is scheduled to fall about 2:15 p.m. ET. After that, there's Phoenix on Nov. 13 and a field of four championship contenders for Nov. 20 at Homestead-Miami.