The Chase Eliminator: Martin's year?
Relive NASCAR's Regular Season Winners
There are 12 drivers in the Chase, and each with a different reason to cheer for them. Who will you be rooting for? Let's quickly recap all the storylines.
• Mark Martin: After four second-place points finishes, can he win the title at 50?
• Tony Stewart: Will he be the first owner/driver to win a title since Alan Kulwicki?
• Jimmie Johnson: He'd be the first driver ever to win four straight titles.
• Denny Hamlin: Nobody's hotter going in, could he top the third-place run he had as a rookie?
• Kasey Kahne: Will he bring Richard Petty another championship?
• Jeff Gordon: Five titles is ground only Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt have seen before.
• Kurt Busch: He won the first Chase, and he would be Dodge's first series champion since 1975.
• Brian Vickers: A remarkable turnaround for Red Bull, in just its third season.
• Carl Edwards: A championship favorite entering 2009, Edwards struggled. Could he win on a broken foot?
• Ryan Newman: After a team change, could he steal the headlines from owner Tony Stewart?
• Juan Pablo Montoya: Former Indy 500 winner would be the first foreign-born Cup champion.
• Greg Biffle: Already won a Nationwide and Trucks title; he'd be the first to win all three.
It's easy to let your emotions take over when you're predicting a Chase winner. The only fair way to do it is to let the numbers take over. Numbers don't have feelings; they're as cold as it will be here in November when the cup is awarded to somebody who's in nice and toasty Miami (no, I'm not bitter).
So it's time to break out an old, trusted method. If you need some catching up, here you go.
There are 12 drivers running for the championship, and obviously, only one can capture the title. Many prognosticators will make their picks based on a hunch, some will come with some sort of evidence. But only I will break down the Chase field and tell you why 11 of these guys just can't win the title.
The one driver left standing when it's all over, by process of elimination (get it?), has to win the title. It's a little something I like to call The Eliminator.
First of all, you need to have some experience at the top of the points. Each of the previous five Chase winners all had previously finished a season with a top-three points finish. By my count, four of this year's Chasers have never done that. Good luck next year to Kasey Kahne, Brian Vickers, Ryan Newman and Juan Pablo Montoya.
I like a driver who's in championship form at the end of the regular season. Four of the five Chase winners, including both winners since the Chase changed to a 12-driver format, ended the regular season with at least three top-10 finishes in the last five races. So let's take out the three drivers who are ice cold, Tony Stewart, Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards. Shocking eliminations? That's how I roll.
The Chase is laden with races on 1.5-mile tracks, four of them to be exact, so you need to run well there. Each of the last three Chase winners had at least a second-place finish on one of the intermediate tracks heading into the Chase. So let's take out the guys who haven't done that yet. Cross Denny Hamlin and Greg Biffle off your list.
Sure, all the drivers start the Chase bunched closely together, but the drivers with high seeds going in have been shown to have an advantage. Each of the last four Chase winners all started the Chase with a top-three seed. I'm taking out Jeff Gordon and Kurt Busch, and if you're playing along, that leaves just one driver.
Here's some more numbers for you. How about 4, 50 and 1? After finishing runner-up four times, a 50-year-old will win his first championship. The Eliminator's taking Mark Martin. Remember, the numbers don't lie.
Matt Willis is a studio researcher at ESPN.
