Chase leaders avoid drop

FONTANA, Calif. --- Kasey Kahne needs help. A lot of help. He's needs some fender-benders and blown engines.

A couple of loose lug nuts and pit road speeding penalties wouldn't hurt, either.

If the driver of the No. 9 Dodge is going to be competitive in the Chase for the Championship, he needs a lot of other people to have problems.

"Every week, the top 10 is eight or nine guys that are in the Chase," Kahne said while preparing for Sunday's Pepsi 500 at Auto Club Speedway.

"If that's the case and nobody else has problems, then you're not going to get back in it. You can't. I think we need other guys to break, other guys to have a problem. That will put us back in the playing field."

Unlike seasons past, there have been few problems among playoff drivers.

Jimmie Johnson was the only driver in the Chase a year ago who didn't have a finish of 20th or worse, and that's why he won the championship.

This year, eight of the 12 drivers in the Chase have gone through the first three races without any problems.

And it's made it difficult for drivers like Kahne to make up ground.

Kahne started the Chase with a blown engine and a 38th-place finish at New Hampshire.

Last week, Brian Vickers finished 37th with a blown engine. Vickers is 250 points behind series leader Mark Martin; Kahne is 190 behind.

If Kahne and Vickers are to make up any ground on Sunday, they'll have to do it from the back of the pack.

Kahne qualified 25th; Vickers was 32nd.

Denny Hamlin won the pole with a fast lap of 183.870 mph. He also starts the race ranked sixth in the Chase, 99 points behind Martin.

David Reutimann qualified second at 183.108 but was sent to the rear when his No. 00 Toyota failed inspection for exceeding the gas-level limit in the rear shocks.

Greg Biffle will now start second. The rest of the top 10 starters are: Johnson in third, Juan Pablo Montoya in fourth, Martin Truex Jr. in fifth, Joey Logano in sixth, Kevin Harvick in seventh, Clint Bowyer in eighth, Martin in ninth and Jeff Gordon in 10th.

"We're not going to make up three races in one," Vickers said. "We just have to come here and do the best, try to win the race and lead laps. That's our goal. It's not like we feel we're out of it, but we obviously have some catching up to do."

Ryan Newman and Carl Edwards had penalties on pit road last week at Kansas, and that dropped them to ninth and 10th in the rankings.

Unless everyone else has problems, they have no chance to erase their deficits.

"You come to every race to win, and until it's a mathematical impossibility, we fight for the championship," Edwards said. "Yes, I'd love to be leading Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin by 165 points. I guess in 2006 at this point, Jimmie was the exact number behind the leader that we are, and somehow he managed to pull it off. We're the same team that won more races and scored more points than anyone else last season, so I still hang on to the fact that we can do it. We just have to execute it. We have to go put our flag out there."

Martin leads Johnson by 18 points.

Montoya is 51 points behind in third. He's the only driver with three top-five finishes in the Chase, and he's lost ground to the leaders.

"It's still far away," he said. "I don't like to get excited about it. I can't. We've been having good finishes and everything and we've just got to keep doing that," Montoya said.

Reach Don Coble at don.coble@morris.com.