Anything's possible.

It might be as cold in Hell as it is in Colorado today.
After years of disappointment, I still consider myself a Colorado Rockies fan, though watching baseball on television isn't one of my favorite passtimes.
After the first two seasons of their existance, the Rockies story seemed to be the same every year--start the season strong, then slump, then fade into nothing. I got to telling people that "I like the Rockies, so I'm not much of a baseball fan."
Somebody read that exact phrase as I wrote it in one of the forums in which I participate, and sent me a message telling me about the amazing winning streak the Rockies were experiencing. This was before the playoffs, and, dutifully amazed, I watched the Rockies easily take the National League Championship.
So, after seven years of being less than optimistic about my home town baseball team, I find that the Rockies are a very real World Series contender.
With that in mind, I have to consider that there are still five races to go in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Chase for the Championship, there is no way we can give up on Tony Stewart. Jeff Gordon has said, after the last two races, that nobody should give up on Stewart, that he can still come back and win the chase, and that he could do it without the HMS teams running into trouble. Jeff Gordon is saying this to keep himself motivated to excell, but he is also the most experienced active driver in the Cup Series when it comes to competing for the championship, so we have to assume that he knows what he is talking about.
I would rather see Gordon and Johnson take each other out at Martinsville--they are entirely capable of doing that, as competitive as they are--but to think that Stewart can come from behind without help from other peoples misfortune takes a lot of faith.

Still, knowing Tony's talent and abilities, having that faith is not, at this point, overly optimistic. A lot can happen in five races, and getting top two's in each of those five races is not that far fetched for the #20 team. Most of the journalists in the Media have given up on Smoke, but Jeff Gordon hasn't, his team hasn't, and I'm not ready to do that either.