The biggest gripe about NASCAR's new 10-man Chase for the Nextel Cup championship was that the drivers not in the title battle would be ignored.
Nobody could ignore Joe Nemechek on Sunday in Kansas City, Kan., after he held off Ricky Rudd to win the Banquet 400 and finish off a weekend sweep at Kansas Speedway.
"The guys in the championship chase have more to lose than we do," Nemechek said. "We're on the offense, not on defense."
This one was almost as close as his half car-length victory over Greg Biffle in the Busch Series event Saturday, with Nemechek and Rudd racing side-by-side and bumping once with a lap to go before Nemechek took control again and beat Rudd to the finish by 0.081 seconds — about 1 1/4 car-lengths.
Nemechek, who did a backward victory lap on the 1 1/2-mile oval to honor the memory of his brother, John, killed in a truck race in Homestead, Fla., in 1997, was relieved to win after nearly getting too conservative at the end.
"There at the end I was trying to save gas and here come Ricky Rudd out of nowhere," Nemechek said. "I was like, 'Holy moley.' I had to get back on it. He got beside me one time, but I wasn't going to let it happen."
"The end of the race was pretty neat," said Rudd, who drove onto the apron and nearly spun out on the late restart before breaking out of the pack to chase down Nemechek.
"I got hung up in traffic, and Joe had a half-a-straightaway lead on us," Rudd added. "I caught him somehow, and I got to his door, but my car was slipping and I had to ease off so I didn't take us both out. Joe and I, neither one, needed that type of ending to a great day for both of us."
FORMULA ONE: At Suzuka, Japan, Michael Schumacher asserted his authority in Formula One again Sunday with his 13th victory of the season but first since August. The seven-time world champion captured the Japanese Grand Prix, which was run in sunshine after days of rain and a typhoon threat.
Schumacher won 12 of the first 13 races before losing three straight. In his previous race, he finished 12th at the Chinese Grand Prix, his worst finish since 1999.
Schumacher, with 83 career victories, clinched the drivers' title by finishing second at the Belgian GP behind Kimi Raikkonen and had gone winless since the Hungarian Grand Prix.