Chaos and carnage are synonymous with NASCAR racing, but sometimes predicting how things will play out in the notoriously volatile sport is surprisingly easy.
When the field for the 2013 Chase for the Sprint Cup was set, most experts suggested it would be a three-way race between Matt Kenseth, Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch. The top three seeds had combined to win half the races during NASCAR's regular season, so tabbing them as the favourites was hardly going out on a limb.
Yet just two races into the 10-race playoff, it's hard to see anyone other than one of those three drivers lifting the Sprint Cup trophy in Florida in November.
With wins in each of the first two Chase events, and a series-high seven victories this season, Kenseth has extended his lead since starting the playoffs at the top seed. The small cushion he's built up gives him some room for error, but he hasn't been able to pull away from his teammate Busch, lurking just 14 points behind or five-time series champion Johnson 18 points back.
Since the Chase began in 2004, only twice have drivers outside of the top three in points after two playoffs races won the title. Tony Stewart was fifth after two events in 2005 and came back to win and Johnson charged back from eighth after two races to win the 2006 title.
Busch has been the runner-up to Kenseth the last two weeks and he believes consistency could trump total race wins in the final standings. Two could be his lucky number as five of the last nine champions have been in second place at this point in the season.
"I've said it for years, if I could finish second in every single Chase race, I'd take it and win a championship over winning a single Chase race that doesn't mean as much as a championship would," Busch told reporters this week.
This weekend's AAA 400 at the Dover International Speedway gives Johnson a chance to close that gap. He's won seven times before at the track dubbed the Monster Mile and is going into Sunday's race looking to improve on the back-to-back top five finishes he's produced so far in the Chase.
To open [the Chase] with a five-four [finishing positions] is great," Johnson told reporters. "One-one, like Matt has, is a lot better, but we're in a good spot. We haven't given up too many points, and we're going to one of my best racetracks in Dover."
None of the other 10 Chase drivers have been mathematically eliminated, but they don't realistically control their own destiny either. Fourth-place Carl Edwards finds himself 36 points back with eight races to go and leads a group of seven drivers separated by a combined 12 points.
To catch the leaders, Edwards and company would need to consistently finish at least three or four spots ahead of all three front runners in each race down the stretch, while avoiding any disastrous finishes themselves. Failing that, they would need all three favourites to have at least one terrible result between now and the end of the year.
It's unlikely that Kenseth, Johnson and Busch will all finish the year unscathed, but it's asking a lot to have all three wreck at least once before the season ends.
The final three drivers in the Chase standings, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Joey Logano and Kasey Kahne have fallen even farther back from that middle pack and have nothing to lose the rest of the way.
"We don't really need to try to string together decent finishes, that's not going to do much for us," Earnhardt said on a conference call this week. "We can gamble on tire strategy and get off sequence in the race and try to make it work for you and get to victory lane."
