Frustrations mount for Mears

Casey Mears is teetering on the edge of the top 35 and a guaranteed spot in every NASCAR Nextel Cup Series race from here on out.
Mears, driver of the No. 25 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports, is 32nd in points and another bad race could knock him out of the top 35. Racing at Bristol Motor Speedway, site of today's Cup race, brings no guarantees. The introduction of NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow adss another level of uncertainty.
It has Mears a little worried.
"Yeah. It's definitely in your thoughts," Mears said. "I think the best thing you can do is just not think about it. You've got to go out and just run your best race because the problem is if you go out there and - like in qualifying, if I went out there and tried to overdo it and hit the fence, our situation would have been worse. In the race, if we try to be conservative you can get caught up in something that's not your fault just because you're being conservative."
What makes things more frustrating is that his Hendrick Motorsports teammates, Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch are having relatively successful seasons so far.
"You just have to go out and run a race like normal and hopefully we come out of here decent," Mears said. "Obviously we'd like to win but if we can get out of here with just a solid finish we can just pad ourselves on the points deal."