RICHMOND -- NASCAR left the Commonwealth of Virginia without its two top drivers Saturday night, packing up and moving to New Hampshire without a map.

Where the season goes from here is anyone's guess.

The biggest night of the year played out on a D-shaped oval under distant stars and artificial lights on cable TV. This wasn't a good night for NASCAR.

A week after Dale Earnhardt Jr. was eliminated from the chase, Jeff Gordon was eliminated from the race for the postseason among the stock-car automobiles. Now comes the dull and redundant finish.

Or so it would seem. What NASCAR needs between now and Miami is a photo finish, a good guy and a villain.

There's still time for that, assuming anyone cares enough about Tony Stewart to pay attention to the final 10 races. And that might be the only thing between Saturday night and the nightmare of a Roush Racing Invitational.

The odd little car owner from Michigan will have five cars in the 10-car "Chase for the Nextel Cup,'' a marketing term for a stretch of races that were once meaningless. Or so we're told.

The 43-car "Race for the Chase,'' a marketing term for a 26-event scramble, ended with Kurt Busch winning a cool trophy that won't fit on his mantle. He and his odd little car owner will now chase a second straight Nextel Cup with nine of NASCAR's distant stars close behind.

How the sanctioning body can generate any interest from the masses without Gordon and Earnhardt is anyone's guess. Losing cable TV would be one way. NASCAR will manage that in about three weeks. By then, the NFL will have reclaimed the major markets and college football will have retaken the South.

And someone said they'll be playing hockey again, but no one's confirmed that.

NASCAR knew all this when it dreamed up the unique playoff format, but never in its wildest trance did it envision a playoff without its two biggest stars. That the unthinkable has happened isn't as much a statement about the Chase as it is about the problem with having only two real stars.

For all of Stewart's fence-climbing, he's not yet big enough to carry the sport. Maybe a Nextel title will do that. Maybe not. The faces of Rusty Wallace and Mark Martin, two beloved drivers who really aren't that beloved, will not carry the sport. The bland personalities of Greg Biffle, Ryan Newman and Jimmie Johnson will race with the bland personalities of Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and Jeremy Mayfield for a TNT fortnight before emerging from the tunnel at Talladega.

NASCAR's hopes will almost certainly be pinned on Stewart by then. He's clearly the sport's third brightest star, having long ago eclipsed the aging veterans and glorified Busch-tour drivers who make up the modern stock-car automobile circuit. The failures of Gordon and Earnhardt came on like a creeping shadow.

"Bottom line is we're way off, and we've got a lot of work to do before next season,'' Gordon said.

Earnhardt said much the same thing a week ago, and NASCAR itself might well be saying it, too, when it wakes up this morning and realizes the NFL season has started and NASCAR's season has ended.

This, of course, is the flaw in the star system, the marketing aim of the sport that orbits around Gordon and Earnhardt. This isn't a flaw in the playoff format. And the gnawing suspicion that NASCAR did everything it could to get its two big names into the Chase suggests they are further away from the bottom line than anyone realized.

Last year's championship came down to the final race with Gordon and Earnhardt still in contention. The premise that the experiment worked exactly as planned lacks logic. The flaw isn't in the 10-race final sprint but the 26-race jog leading up to it. The cold, hard fact is that Gordon hasn't been very good all year and that Earnhardt didn't care enough.

Saturday night's race had the same feel to it. Newman himself said the Chevy Rock & Roll 400 lacked any excitement and others suggested it just lacked rock and roll and others still complained it lacked Chevys. The final races begin next week in New Hampshire with two Chevrolet stock-car automobiles, three Dodges and a redundant stable of Fords.

NASCAR will now hitch its star to Stewart, its only remaining star, and try to make it to Miami without its marketing plan. Or so it would seem.