With all eyes focused on the battle for the twelfth and final transfer pot for this year's Chase for the Cup, one equation that often gets overlooked is how the team's crew chief acts in these situations. For the two teams chasing Clint Bowyer for that 12th-spot, the differences atop the box may be the determining factor.

Making this year's Chase appears to be much more difficult than previously believed for Kasey Kahne and crew chief Kenny Francis. Currently 14th in the standings, Kahne is forty-eight points behind Bowyer in 12th and struggled a bit in Friday morning's practice session - running only the 29th fastest time of the two hour session.

Walking through the garage following Friday's practice, Kenny Francis explained bluntly there is nothing the team can do to get an advantage over Bowyer and David Ragan. "Really, they have to have a bad race is all it comes down to," Francis said. "We try to do the best we can do every race. We've had good races leading up to this; we just broke at Michigan and had a wreck at Bristol.

"I kind of use the No. 20 as a benchmark all year," Francis went on to say. "We were kind of out running them every week for the most part the last month - except Watkins Glen - and look where he's at in points. We've just had a couple of malfunctions that cost us the deal, there's nothing you can really do about it.

"I think you just have to say we had more bad races than everyone else, that's what it boils down to. It doesn't boil down to how well you ran, it boils down to how many times you ran bad."

For sophomore driver David Ragan, the situation seems a bit more optimistic. Coming off a string of consistent finishes, both Ragan and his veteran crew chief Jimmy Fennig appear to be calm, cool and collected heading into Sunday's race. Only fourteen points out of twelfth, Fennig hopes his driver's second-fastest time in practice is an indication of things to come on Sunday.

"There's only one thing we can do," Fennig told HardcoreRaceFans.com, "and that's go out there and win this race. The No. 07 is pretty tough here so it's about all we can do to go out there and win the race.

"Our main objective is to put [David] in position to try and win this race, whether its having good pit stops - of course we want good stops so we can get out first," Fennig added. "Just try everything we can to beat that 07."

With the rain postponing the Cup race until Sunday afternoon, these crew chiefs have two more days to work with their teams and their driver to get them in the right mindset. Unable to work on the car due to an impound procedure; a lot of this battle has to be mental. Throw in the fact qualifying was rained out and these three drivers will be starting right next to each other and you have a story worth watching.