With just three races remaining in 2010, NASCAR’s championship Chase remains knotted at the top with competitors separated by a mere 38 points entering this weekend’s race at Texas Motor Speedway.
Avoiding the ever-present potential for calamity at Talladega affectionately monikered the Big One, four-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson and challengers Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick have just three weeks remaining to stake their claim for NASCAR’s Chase for the Sprint Cup.
While Johnson padded his minuscule lead over Hamlin by eight points with a seventh-place finish to Hamlin’s ninth, the difference still remains a near negligible 14 points. And by virtue of Harvick’s second-place showing, the Richard Childress Racing driver has shrunk Johnson’s lead to just 38 points from third, a difference that can be closed by just a handful of positions in one race or an accident involving the leaders.
Despite its surly reputation among NASCAR faithful, who doesn’t like the Chase now?
Featuring an electric points race with a young gun and seasoned veteran chasing the sport’s dominant star, the 2010 season is proving to be perhaps the most compelling in NASCAR’s Chase era. And making this year’s postseason yet more intriguing, history shows all three drivers have been remarkably competitive in the final stretch of races – Texas, Phoenix International Raceway and the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Harvick enters the final stretch with an average-career finish of approximately 12th at the three remaining facilities. Despite two wins in Phoenix, Harvick’s best performances have come at Homestead where he has an average finish of 8.4 and four top-five finishes in just nine races.
But Hamlin has performed even better at these tracks. With an average-career finish of just over 10th and wins at Miami to conclude 2009 and at Texas earlier this year, Hamlin enters the final stretch with 16 top-10 finishes at these tracks in just 25 attempts.
And then there is Johnson. In the history of the Chase, Johnson has a remarkable 19 wins – nearly three-times as many as the next-best driver – with three Chase wins coming at Phoenix and one in Texas (and with his wins at Phoenix, Johnson holds a remarkable average finish of 4.9 at the facility). With a combined-average finish of ninth at these facilities, better than Harvick or Hamlin, Johnson is poised to capture his fifth-straight NASCAR championship, barring an upset.
But, at this point, the Chase is far from over. Johnson will have to earn his fifth-straight title and, if history proves to be an indicator for results in the remaining races, fans could be settling in to watch one of the tightest championship races in NASCAR history.
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