Sure, two races into NASCAR’s 10-race playoff is too soon to declare a champion — just ask the guy leading the standings — but it does reveal who’s on track, who’s off track and who’s just happy for a good seat at the awards banquet.
Tony Stewart’s back-to-back wins have given him a seven-point edge over Kevin Harvick in the Chase for the Sprint Cup entering Sunday’s race at The Monster Mile in Dover, Del., a pretty impressive start but still not enough for Stewart to consider himself a favorite.
“The reality of it is you look at guys that are in the back half of the Chase right now, they're guys that a lot of people expected to be in the top five, top three in the points right now,’’ Stewart said of drivers such as five-time defending champ Jimmie Johnson and former points leader Kyle Busch.
“It shows that one or two bad days can put you in a bad spot pretty quick.
“As much as we want to sit here and beat our chest and be proud of what we’ve done, and we are proud of what we've done these first two weeks, we got eight hard weeks to go here.”
The top five drivers — Stewart, Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Carl Edwards and Jeff Gordon — are separated by 23 points, which doesn’t sound like a lot thanks to NASCAR’s new point system, a format where only 48 points are available each race.
But using the old points distribution, fifth place Jeff Gordon would now be at a 105-point deficit.
Johnson is 29 points back in 10th place — the lowest he’s ever been ranked in a Chase — and using last year’s system, that’s equivalent to 117 points.
Considering the maximum 48 points available per race, a 29-point deficit is a pretty big chunk to overcome in one race or even two. That means drivers such as Johnson and Kyle Busch, who was tied for the points lead going into the Chase but is now eighth (-28), are probably feeling like they’re down to their last mulligan.
Johnson’s last two finishes of 10th and 18th aren’t panic-worthy, but consider that in his five Chase championship runs combined, he had only six finishes worse than 15th — and never more than two in one Chase.
Last year, Johnson finished 25th at New Hampshire and then reeled off top-five showings (including one victory) in seven of the next nine races. His worst effort in that span was a ninth place at Texas Motor Speedway.
“We’ll take this one on the chin and go on to the next one,” a frustrated Johnson said Sunday, reminding reporters that he has won his titles in a variety of circumstances.
Of the Chase-format champions — dating back to Kurt Busch’s 2004 run — only Jimmie Johnson in 2006 has had more than one sub-20th place finish during the Chase. And only twice — Stewart in 2005 and Johnson in 2006 — did the champ have more than one sub-15th place finish.
Even with the emphasis NASCAR has placed on winning races, consistency and top-10s have historically been the blueprint to taking the trophy in the Chase era.
In 2005, Stewart won the title without winning a single Chase race and in 2006 lost the championship to Johnson — and ultimately finished 10th in points — despite winning three of the 10 Chase events.
The points leader after two races has never gone on to win the championship. However, the edge the top five drivers enjoy now may very well mean this year’s championship is decided among them. It just may be enough of a cushion to hold off a dramatic comeback from all but a couple of the drivers — Kyle Busch and Johnson — currently ranked outside the top-five and capable of going on a hot streak.
Busch, 26, has yet to step it up in five previous Chase competitions, but has proven himself formidable on any given week. And after a historic run of five consecutive championships, Johnson cannot be counted out.
“You’ve just got to take every race as it comes,’’ Johnson said. “You never know what’s going to happen and in my experience in winning five (championships), we lost the points lead due to a wreck in the last lap at Talladega and still came back and won (the title). So anything can happen.’’
Sixth place Dale Earnhardt Jr., is only three points out of fifth place, but this is his first Chase since 2008 and he hasn’t won a race since that year. Seventh place Matt Kenseth hasn’t had a top-five finish since Indianapolis in July.
Eighth place Kurt Busch entered the Chase looking like a true contender, but he’s been out of sorts — throwing temper tantrums aimed at both reporters and his own team in the last three weeks. And his team has been out of sorts, too, with pre-race inspection problems last weekend.
Ryan Newman, ranked 11th, needed a solid finish at New Hampshire — where he won this summer — to realistically get back into the thick of the title run. He’s 34 points out, nearly a full race points total.
Arguably the biggest surprise of the season is that Denny Hamlin hasn’t answered his impressive run at the 2010 title, when he essentially lost the trophy in the season finale. Many pundits picked last year’s championship runner-up to knock off Johnson this season and instead he has endured one frustration after another, cushioned by a lone win at Michigan three months ago. He’s had finishes of 31st and 29th in the Chase and trails Stewart by 66 points.
And for those ready to discount Stewart’s Chase-opening wins as fuel mileage gimmes, remember that strategy is there for anyone’s taking. Stewart just did it better. The question is whether he can continue to outlast the competition.
“Like I’ve said, the cars don't know anything about momentum, but the people do,’’ Stewart said. “This is the perfect scenario to go into these last eight weeks, for sure.’’
