SHUTOUT; Non-chase contenders finish 1-2-3 at Kansas.(Motorsports)

Byline: BILL McGUIRE

When NASCAR announced its new Chase for the Championship points scheme for the Nextel Cup this year, there were some criticisms. One of the beefs, you will recall, was the 10-player playoff format would render the rest of the field redundant. While the top guns battled at the front for the big prize, the other 33 competitors would run around behind them for the last 10 races, irrelevant and ignored. Well, apparently no one explained this scenario to Joe Nemechek. Or Ricky Rudd, or Greg Biffle. Despite their standings as non-players for the title, these three stole the glory at Kansas, finishing first, second and third.

Nemechek qualified his MB2 Motorsports Chevrolet on the pole, with a lap of 29.997 seconds at 180.156 mph on the 1.5-mile, 15-degree tri-oval. Though not quite as quick as Jimmie Johnson's 2003 qualifying record, Nemechek's was the only lap in the 29-second bracket. Kasey Kahne threw down the second-fastest lap, while his Evernham teammate Jeremy Mayfield, 10th in the Chase and fighting to keep his title hopes alive, qualified his Dodge third.

At the start Mayfield quickly moved to the front to lead the first laps, while Nemechek temporarily faded. The two Evernham Dodges were strong over the first few runs, as were Johnson, Ryan Newman and Biffle. However, Johnson got into trouble on lap 152 when he and fellow Chase contender Kurt Busch spun coming off Turn Two. Miraculously, neither hit anything and both continued. But Johnson spun again on lap 214, and this time wrecked himself out of contention.

Other Chase racers struggled as well: Jeff Gordon never found the handle all day, at one point falling a lap behind but salvaging a 13th-place finish. Newman crashed on lap 223, then suffered a driveline failure. He finished 33rd, 44 laps down. Matt Kenseth finished 17th, while Mark Martin was fast at times but caught several bad breaks and came home 20th.

Biffle clearly had the strong- est car in the middle stretches when more than 120 laps were run under green, but as the race wound down, Nemechek and Rudd had worked themselves into better positions for the final run. "Track position was everything,'' said Biffle. "We weren't getting the fuel mileage and we had to come down pit road. You don't get cars like this often, but those were the cards we were dealt.''

On the last green-flag run, Nemechek broke away briefly while Rudd and Biffle were caught in lapped traffic. But Rudd's Wood Brothers Taurus managed to run down and catch Nemechek, setting up one final duel over the last two laps with Rudd's Ford on the inside and Nemechek's Chevy on the outside. Nemechek held off Rudd's final charge on the apron at the checkered flag to take the win. "I got under him, but I broke loose and slipped,'' said Rudd. "I would have loved to have won it. We gave it all we had but I wasn't going to take a cheap shot at Joe because I know he was hungry, too.''