The NASCAR Nationwide Series gets to take a breather this weekend. It is a time to reflect and re-group for these teams so that when they head to Dover next weekend they should all be at the top of their game.

This is the first break in the Nationwide schedule since the middle of May. The teams certainly deserve a rest.

However, next week it will be back to the grind and no one will be as dedicated to the task as Kyle Busch.

Busch is currently the series points leader and since his Sprint Cup Chase dreams have been lost he will most certainly put all of his effort into keeping the 201-point lead he has over fellow Cup driver Carl Edwards.

Edwards, meanwhile, will be working overtime to whittle away at Busch’s lead in the Nationwide Series while trying to take full advantage of his Chase berth in Cup.

In 2006, Kevin Harvick was in the same position as Edwards. He was trying to get a championship in both Cup and Nationwide, however he was leading the Nationwide Series points at the time by a large margin. He succeeded in Nationwide and won the championship by a whopping 824 points over Edwards. Unfortunately, his Cup endeavor did not go as he had hoped and he ended the season 4th in the standings, 78 points behind champion Jimmie Johnson.

Since Edwards is not leading the series points he definitely has his work cut out for him and history proves how difficult it will be to accomplish.

Third place Brad Keselowski is only 97 points behind Edwards so he could jump into the fray before the season ends, as well.

From there, Jason Leffler is sitting comfortably in 4th. He is 780 points out of 1st but the 5th place driver, rookie Justin Allgaier, is 447 points behind him. It is safe to say that Leffler will finish 4th and be able to take the stage at the awards banquet later this year.

Allgaier, however, has a little competition from 6th place Steve Wallace who is only 20 points away from him. Those two will certainly duke it out for the 5th place finish, which is the final position that is allowed to get on stage at the combined Camping World Truck Series/Nationwide Series awards banquet after the end of the season.

Jason Keller, Brendan Gaughn, Mike Bliss and Michael McDowell complete the current top-10 in Nationwide Series points. Those four drivers are within 89 points of each other and McDowell is only 250 points away from 5th place so that battle will also be interesting to watch.

With a week off between races, the on-track action at Dover will be exciting and the shake-up in the points after the race will be interesting to see.

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