How far will NASCAR drivers go to win championship?

MARTINSVILLE

A debate rages deep inside each championship contender. Shakespearian it might not be, but the pull between right and wrong can be as taut and tangled with four races left in NASCAR's title Chase.

As drivers near the end of today's NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Martinsville Speedway, they could face a moment where they will have to decide how far they'll go to win a championship.

What will they do?

"You do what you have to do to try to win the championship, and you suffer the consequences later," said Kevin Harvick, fifth in the standings, 26 points behind Carl Edwards.

"What's fair in my mind is probably not what's fair in the (mind of the) guys in the first two spots. It's just a matter of doing what you have to do for your team and sometimes fair, in the end, doesn't win the championship."

Harvick is not alone. Teammate Jeff Burton, who is not in the Chase, understands the dilemma Harvick and others racing for the crown face.

"I'll tell you that there's a group of drivers out there that I wouldn't spin out on the last lap to win the championship because I know they wouldn't do that to me," Burton said. "There's a group of drivers out there that I would spin out on the last lap because I know they would do that.

"If I spun one of those guys out to win that championship, I'd hold that trophy up as high as I could hold it and wouldn't have any, any, any remorse whatsoever about it. But if I spun out one of those other guys, I'd hide behind the trophy. It would take away for the rest of my life. I know that I crossed the line with someone that I shouldn't have crossed the line with and every time I looked at that trophy that would be in the back of my mind."

How far one is willing to go is a question each driver and team must ponder as the title race intensifies. Four drivers are within 26 points of Edwards entering today's race.

Brad Keselowski, who is third in the standings, 18 points behind Edwards, said he's questioned car owner Roger Penske about why the Penske teams didn't do certain things to their cars that others might get away with.

Keselowski said Penske told him: "I don't live in the gray area, it's not how I run my race teams... and if I lose races because I'm not in the gray area, I'll accept that so that I don't have to answer for the races that I've won and been yelled at or discredited or had the asterisk put next to me for some sort of violation."

Even after hearing Penske's comments, Keselow-ski admits it's difficult to determine where the line between being fair or not is when someone is chasing a championship.

"It's easy to fall into temptation of sorts to push it a little bit harder," Keselowski said. "I want to win as bad as anyone else, sometimes more. I don't want that win to be discredited in any way, shape or form."

Adding to the dilemma for Edwards and Matt Kenseth, who trails Edwards by 14 points, is that they are teammates at Roush Fenway Racing. Kenseth said he won't let the title race cloud his decision-making process.

"I think you do everything you can do in the car, on pit road, the whole thing, for performance and no more," Kenseth said. "Whenever I've tried to do more than I'm capable of doing, it's never had a good result."

Edwards said he'd be guided by his conscience.

"I feel guilty if I do something that I feel is kind of wrong or outside the rules, so I try not to do that stuff," Edwards said. "I'd rather win fair. That's just the way I am, and I think that's the way most of these guys are out here."

Yeah, but it's easy to say that now. What about if that moment arrives and a driver has to decide how far he'll go for the championship?

"Are there some guys you would spin out to win the championship? " Edwards said, repeating the question. "Right now, I can't say that if we're at Homestead and it's the last lap and the guy in front of me, all I have to do is get in front of him to win the championship - I don't know that there's anybody right now out there that I would spin out.

"But I'm not in that situation right now. I don't know. I've learned the hard way. You've got to be careful about wrecking people on purpose. You never know what the outcome of that will be."