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Clint Bowyer has it. David Ragan and Kasey Kahne both want it. One race, one night and only one will go home happy.

Boiled down to its bones, that's the story for Saturday night's Chevy Rock & Roll 400 at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway.

Bowyer, Ragan and Kahne may not figure in who wins the 26th race of the 2008 Sprint Cup season, but going in they are the main players in the event's central drama - the battle for the final spot in this year's Chase for the Sprint Cup.

It is at least mathematically possible that Bowyer, Ragan and Kahne could all make the Chase.

That, however, would take a remarkable set of circumstances given the gap between Denny Hamlin, who's currently 11th in the standings, and the three drivers directly behind him.

Matt Kenseth, Jeff Gordon and Hamlin primarily need only to avoid a disastrous outcome to secure their slots in the 10-race championship battle that commences next weekend at Loudon, New Hampshire. Kenseth is 109 points ahead of Ragan, who's 13th, while Gordon's Chase cushion is 102 points and Hamlin's is 93.

In the first four years of the Chase, the largest gap that's been made up in the final regular-season event at Richmond is 55 points.

That's how far out Jeremy Mayfield was in the Chase's first year in 2004 when he came from 14th to unseat Kahne from one of the 10 qualifying spots that year.

Kahne was 30 points out of the top 10 in 2006, the last year only 10 drivers made the Chase.

But he was actually 45 points behind the driver he passed with his third-place finish at Richmond, Tony Stewart, who finished 18th and missed the playoff.

Bowyer's perch, then, seems precarious.

He's only 17 points up on Ragan, who's trying to make the Chase for the first time the way Bowyer did a year ago.

Kahne is 48 points back as he tries to fight his way in at the last race the way he did two seasons ago.

As the determining moment approaches, the parties with the most to gain (or lose) can only get ready as best they know how.

"Obviously it's crunch time," Bowyer said. "If there's anything that gives you a good feeling, it's knowing that we won there in the spring and it's a track that I typically run well at."

The race at Richmond this May is remembered most as one where Hamlin dominated until he had problems, and where Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a late-race bumping incident. But it was Bowyer who won that night for his only win so far this year.

Bowyer's record

Bowyer's worst career Richmond finish in five tries in his No. 07 Sprint Cup Chevrolet is 12th. But that doesn't mean he's not worried.

"Richmond is a track where anything can happen," he said. "We've kind of put ourselves in this situation, but it's time to see what we are made out of."

If Bowyer slips, Ragan is in the best position to benefit. Ragan fell five points after last week's race at California, but he had a third-place finish in last fall's Richmond race and could certainly use another good result like that to at least keep the pressure on Bowyer.

"The bottom line is we've got to go out and beat these guys," Ragan said. "There's no other way around it."

This is Ragan's second season in Cup, and Saturday night's event could very well be the most pressure he's faced in any single race so far in his career.

"I probably don't realize how big this race is," Ragan said. "After the year is over we'll have time to sit back and think about it, but I'm trying not to go about it like that. If I put this much effort and concentration into one race, a make-or-break race, I think that would be a little too much. Certainly, we're all excited about the race, to where we're thinking about it, but we've just got to go out and run our race, and whether we make the Chase or not is not going to depend on just the one race at Richmond. I can go back all the way to the Daytona 500 and talk about things that I would've done different and would've gotten us different results."

Kahne is far enough back that he knows he could win the race and still have that not be enough to make the Chase.

"All we can do is do our best and hope that it works out for us and kind of see how the points end up," he said. "If we run our race, it doesn't necessarily mean we are going to make it into the Chase."

Kahne said just a few weeks ago he was thinking more about how far up among the drivers in the Chase he might finish after Saturday night.

"I went into Michigan kind of thinking that we had been running really strong, we had been right there every weekend," he said. "I felt like maybe we had a shot at maybe being sixth in points ... and then just racing happened."

He blew an engine at Richmond and got sucked up into a wreck at Bristol, finishing 40th in both races. All of sudden, he was out of the top 12.

"I was really surprised to see how quickly we lost a lot of spots and ended up maybe having a shot at making it in," he said. "We're 14th now. ... I think that we're better than that. But you know, now it's what it is and we'll see if we can make it."[[In-content Ad]]

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