NASCAR Cup Series

Is Joe Gibbs Racing in the catbird seat for the Sprint Cup title?

Published Oct. 10, 2014 10:00 a.m. ET

Tom Jensen

By the time the checkered flag falls on the 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, Joe Gibbs Racing well might have the last laugh on the field.

All summer long, the three JGR Toyotas have lagged behind the all-conquering Team Penske Fords and Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolets, which so far have combined to win 21 of 30 Sprint Cup races this season to just two for JGR.

The last time a JGR Cup car visited Victory Lane was in early May at Talladega Superspeedway, 20 races ago. The last time the team won the Sprint Cup championship was 2005, when Tony Stewart drove for JGR.

But it appears the JGR squad has picked the right time to peak -- and gotten lots of help in the form of the misfortunes of others.

JGR drivers Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin will start first and third, respectively, in Saturday night's Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Those two, along with teammate Matt Kenseth, are all in the top seven in Cup points, while the bottom five of the 12 drivers in championship contention are all from Penske and Hendrick.

With the revamped championship format, the field for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup will be cut from 12 to eight drivers after the Oct. 19 race at Talladega. There's a strong chance three of those final eight who make it to the next round could be JGR drivers, something unfathomable before the Chase started.

When NASCAR revised its championship system for this year, drivers basically qualified for the Chase by winning one or more races in NASCAR's regular season.

But with the Chase broken into three rounds of three races each followed by a winner-take-all season finale, right now it's all about points racing. With the points reset every round and no bonus points for winning, what happened before essentially doesn't matter.

And that's been a huge help to JGR and a huge bump in the road for Penske and Hendrick.

"This is not a 10-race Chase anymore; it's a three-race Chase over and over," said Hamlin. "Honestly, from my perspective and probably the guys that I'm around in points that have not shown the speed that some guys have, it's a blessing because we have ourselves a great opportunity to move on and race for a championship where the other guys are probably very frustrated with this because they've got multiple wins and have shown speed and things like that and are behind us in points."

Without question, the new Chase format has ratcheted up the pressure on drivers and teams.

"I mean, I think it's incredibly intense and certainly makes for a very exciting storyline. That is for sure," said Jeff Gordon, who is eighth in points, right now the only Hendrick driver in position to transfer to the next Chase round. "I think this actually gets you more like -- in a lot of ways like other sports where you can have a perfect record and lose the first game of the playoffs."

"There's a lot at stake, but (there) is every weekend," said Penske's Brad Keselowski, winner of five races so far this season but 10th in points now. "This is part of the challenge. For us, this is a very Homestead-like weekend. We need to perform. This is our last chance to really control our destiny in the Chase for this round, and we want to make the most of this opportunity."

Asked Thursday if before the Chase he imagined JGR would be in such a good position now, pole-sitter Kyle Busch said he didn't, but he's going to try and take advantage of his good fortune and the misfortunes of others.

"I don't think we would have," said Busch. "We certainly have been fighting really hard at Joe Gibbs Racing to get ourselves up to running with the level of competition that we've been seeing from our competitors. ... For us now it's just about trying to come out of here with a solid finish at Charlotte and put ourselves in the best position possible that we can head into next week for Talladega."

VIDEO: Kyle Busch discusses third-place finish last weekend in Kansas