NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Five-Time Vs. Bad Brad For The Title
Jimmie Johnson leads Brad Keselowski by 2 points with three races to go…
Tom Jensen  |  Posted October 29, 2012   Charlotte, NC
Jimmie Johnson, (Left) driver of the No. 48 MyLowe's Chevrolet, talks to Brad Keselowski, (Right) driver of the No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge. (Photo: Getty Images)
And then there were two.

With just three races left in the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup season, Jimmie Johnson and Brad Keselowski are the last two drivers with a realistic shot at the championship.

After winning and scoring the maximum points in Sunday’s Tums Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway, five-time series champion Johnson has a narrow 2-point lead over the challenger Keselowski.

History and mathematics both strongly suggest the other 10 drivers in the Chase for the Sprint Cup already are out of contention for the big prize.

There have been eight prior editions of the Chase, with the eventual champion leading five times at this point — Kurt Busch in 2004, Tony Stewart in ’05 and Johnson in 2008-10. In 2006-07, Johnson was second after seven races and then went on to capture the title. Last year, Stewart was second before winning two of the final three races.

Stewart was 8 points behind at this point last year, the largest deficit anyone has made up over the last three races in winning a Chase title. In 2006, Johnson was the equivalent of 6 points back (there was a different point system pre-2011) and in ’07, he was the equivalent of 2 points behind.

The bottom line? No driver in the Chase era has won the title from third place or back after seven races, and no driver has made up a points deficit greater than 8 points in the final three races.

Realistically, that probably leaves Clint Bowyer, who is 26 points behind Johnson and Kasey Kahne (-29), battling for third place, with Denny Hamlin (-49) and Jeff Gordon (-54) wrestling for fifth.

Behind them, positions 6-10 are up for grabs among Martin Truex Jr. (-63), Matt Kenseth (-65), Greg Biffle (-69) and Tony Stewart (-71). In all probability, Kevin Harvick (-88) and Dale Earnhardt (-140) will finish 11th and 12th, respectively.

As it has every year since its inception in 2004, the Chase has functioned like a game of musical chairs. With each passing race, one of more Chase drivers was eliminated from serious title contention through a variety of circumstances.

Gordon was virtually knocked out in the Chase opener at Chicagoland Speedway, when a stuck throttle while running fourth put him into the wall and left him 35th in the race.

After leading the points for much of the regular season, Biffle finished outside the top 10 in the first three Chase races and 27th at Kansas.

A broken track bar at Dover left Kenseth 35th, and even subsequent victories at Talladega and Kansas didn’t get him back in the top half of the field.

Stewart, the defending series champion, has been bad all Chase long with only one top five and three finishes of 20th or worse.

Earnhardt missed two races with a concussion suffered at Talladega.

Harvick hasn’t had a single top-10 finish in the Chase and lost an engine Sunday at Martinsville.

Hamlin ran out of gas in the Chase opener and finished 16th, while an ignition system failure at Martinsville left him 33rd there.

Truex had his worst race of the Chase at Martinsville, where he finished 23rd, and he had three other races where he was 10th or worse.

As for Bowyer and Kahne, they’ve both been really, really good, but Johnson and Keselowski have been a little better.

How much better?

In the seven Chase races, Johnson has one victory, five top-five finishes and an average finish of 5.43. Keselowski has won twice, finished no worse than 11th in any race and has an average finish of 5.71.

If these numbers hold — and there’s no reason to expect they won’t — it should be quite a title battle.

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.
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