Road-course races, much like restrictor-plate tracks or the bumping and banging of short tracks, have typically been some of the Nextel Cup Series’ “toss up” races.

With five races remaining before the field is set for the drivers who will compete in the Chase for the Nextel Cup, two of those “toss up” races remain.

The first is Sunday’s Sirius Satellite Radio at the Glen road course race at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International; the second is the Aug. 27 race on the high-banked short track in Bristol, Tenn.

None of the four drivers still within 100 points of making the top 10 – Jamie McMurray, Elliott Sadler, Kevin Harvick and Jeff Gordon – cringes at the thought of a road course.

Gordon, particularly, has excelled at left and right turns in NASCAR. Harvick has been strong in recent seasons, and both McMurray and Sadler have top-10 finishes.

Of course some look forward to the event more than others.

“I’m really looking forward to getting up there,” said Gordon’s crew chief, Robbie Loomis. “The road courses have been real good to us.

“We’re trying to keep the big picture in mind. We want to go there and win, but we want to go there and have a good, solid day.”

Gordon, who owns a NASCAR record seven road course victories, is coming off an eighth-place finish at Indianapolis, snapping a three-week stretch of finishes of 13th or worse.

“I wish the next five were road courses,” Loomis said. “We’re good at all the places we got left to go to before the Chase.

“We just need to keep giving it our best effort and not worry about the points. If we give it our best effort and we can lay down at night and know we did everything we could, things will take care of themselves.”

Regardless of Gordon’s up-and-down season, Loomis said he has “a good feeling” about how it will turn out.

“It’s unfortunate we’re in this situation. It’s because of the choices I’ve made and some luck, but we have the ability to make one of the best comebacks of the year,” he said.

While Gordon is working his way up out of a hole, Sadler and his team are trying to halt a slide. He has dropped from third to 12th in points over the past five races.

“We’ve got no room for errors. It’s really that simple. Right now we’ve got some ground to make up so we’ve got to hit all of marks as a team and hope that we can perform better than the guys in front of us,” said Sadler, who will also run the Busch race Saturday in Watkins Glen for added seat time.

“Watkins Glen, as far as a road course goes, suits my style a little better than Sonoma. It’s faster than Sonoma but you still have to be 100 percent focused at all times.

“You can’t afford to make a single mistake because track position is so important.”

For McMurray, who has floated in and out of the top 10 over the past several weeks, Sunday’s race is a hump he and his team need to navigate without any problems.

“I believe this is going to be one of those events that could be a ‘make or break’ for some of the teams in the same position we are. There are a lot of unknowns at road courses because we don’t run them very often,” he said.

“The keys to being successful at Watkins Glen are qualifying well, keeping yourself up front with solid pit strategy and staying on the course. If you can do all of that, you’re almost guaranteed to have a good finish.

“We’ve run okay there in the past, but it’s imperative for us to have a top-10 run there this weekend.”

Harvick has dismissed talk of the Chase in recent weeks, preferring to concentrate on week-to-week performance. He has proven a solid road course driver since he joined the series in 2001, with two top fives and four top-10s in nine starts.