GEARING UP

What’s new in motor sports heading into this weekend:

1) The NHRA’s Countdown to the Championship that determines drag-racing’s title winners enters the home stretch with the next-to-last race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The event is followed next week by the finals in Pomona, with four drivers in each of the sport’s major classes -- including top fuel and funny car -- competing for the Powerade Series title.

2) NASCAR’s Chase for the Nextel Cup is turning into a two-man battle between Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson.

With only four races left, including Sunday’s race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Gordon leads Johnson by 53 points and Clint Bowyer by 115. The other nine Chase drivers are more than 200 points behind Gordon, a four-time title winner.

3) A feud between Cup teammates Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth, who also are in the Chase, surfaced publicly this week following their argument after Sunday’s race in Martinsville, Va.

Edwards later told reporters he was “definitely wrong for showing my anger.” But Edwards said he was frustrated not only with some on-track incidents with Kenseth, but that Kenseth and others on the Roush Fenway Racing team weren’t showing the teamwork and support he wanted.

Another Chase driver, Kevin Harvick of Richard Childress Racing, said video of the drivers’ on-track squabble “looked like road rage” and that comments by Kenseth and others on the Roush Fenway team indicated “none of them really respect or, it seems, like” Edwards.

4) IndyCar Series champion Dario Franchitti will make his NASCAR Busch Series debut Saturday at Memphis (Tenn.) Motorsports Park.

Franchitti, who also won the Indianapolis 500 this season, is preparing to join NASCAR’s top-tier Nextel Cup Series next year.

5) In local racing Saturday night, late-model stock cars are featured at Perris Auto Speedway and sprint-car racing heads the lineup at Ventura Raceway.

STAT OF THE WEEK

* Top-fuel drag racer Tony Schumacher, above, has won the last two fall races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, site of this weekend’s NHRA Powerade Series event, and has been in the final round four of the last five years.

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

Sebastien Bourdais, after winning his fourth consecutive Champ Car World Series title, reflecting on his career and three straight wins at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach:

‘Long Beach will probably remain very special for me.’