Matt Kenseth Moves to the Head of the Title Class as NASCAR Chase Beckons

Matt Kenseth, who in 2003 won the last Winston Cup championship, which is to say the last without a Chase format, has won three of the last six races at the head of the NASCAR stretch.

"Man, it was so long ago, it's hard (to remember)," Kenseth said to NBC Sports after winning Saturday night's Federated Auto Parts 400 at Richmond International Raceway. "There [have] been so many rules changes. So many things are different."

The team for which Kenseth competes is Joe Gibbs Racing, which, adding Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards, won seven of the last nine regular-season races. A fourth driver from the team, Denny Hamlin, is also in the field, albeit nursing a knee injury.

Driver	Points	Wins	Avg. Finish	Past Titles
Matt Kenseth	2,012	4	13.3	1
Jimmie Johnson	2,012	4	12.1	6
Kyle Busch	2,012	4	11.4	0
Joey Logano	2,009	3	8.6	0
Kevin Harvick	2,006	2	7.7	1
Dale Earnhardt Jr.	2,006	2	10.2	0
Kurt Busch	2,006	2	10.9	1
Carl Edwards	2,006	2	16.2	0
Brad Keselowski	2,003	1	11.3	1
Martin Truex Jr.	2,003	1	13.2	0
Denny Hamlin	2,003	1	14.1	0
Jeff Gordon	2,000	0	16.0	4
Jamie McMurray	2,000	0	15.0	0
Ryan Newman	2,000	0	13.8	0
Clint Bowyer	2,000	0	16.7	0
Paul Menard	2,000	0	16.7	0

The Chase is now for the Sprint Cup, and Kenseth, because of where he is, because of how he is doing, is the favorite, but just barely because, under this fickle format, nothing in the past much matters.

"We've had a lot of different things happen, where all four of us now have been able to win races and we're all in the Chase," Kenseth said in his post-race media conference. "I feel like all four teams are really competitive.

"I feel like as a company, we're stronger this year."

Gibbs, who manages well the art of being humble against all odds, said of the Chase field after Kenseth's victory at Richmond International Raceway, "All 16 of these teams earned their way in. If somebody gets hot down the stretch, we've seen it before, if somebody gets hot, [he's] got a chance to win a championship. I just hope it's one of our cars."

NBC Sports' Nate Ryan relayed this comment from Edwards:

He's got a 25 percent shot in members alone. Four Gibbs-owned Toyotas are in the field of 16. By almost any measure, all are in the strongest eight based on regular-season performance.

R Brent Smith/Associated Press

In other sports, it is possible to control one's own destiny. In this one, such a concept is fleeting.

The 26 races just completed have been useful for determining the Chase field and awarding extra points for the 11 drivers out of the 16 in the field who have won races. In each of the four rounds, a victory can advance a driver to the next but carry no tangible benefit with it.

After the first three races—Chicagoland, New Hampshire and Dover—12 drivers advance, ranked evenly. Eight move on after Kansas, Charlotte and Talladega. After Martinsville, Texas and Phoenix, four drivers will settle the championship in the grand finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

Last year one of the finalists was Ryan Newman. He could be again.

"The ultimate strategy is always to win, as it always has been in our sport," Newman said in a September 11 media conference at the Richmond track. "The way the brackets work, you win and you're in. At the last race (in 2014), it came down to winning, but there is no guarantee for that.

"You might be able to finish fifth and win the championship."

Kevin Harvick won last year's championship and could do so again, but the runner-up was Newman, who didn't win a race all year and hasn't won one so far in this one.

With apologies for his cliche, Newman actually said, "At the same time, you are only in control of what you are in control of."

Indubitably.

Almost anything can happen.

Jeff Gordon is one of five winless drivers in the Chase. While tipping his cap to the Gibbs juggernaut on NBC Sports, he said of his own team, and usual juggernaut, Hendrick Motorsports, "We're behind. We know that. Those guys (at Gibbs) are unbelievable, but there's a lot of ways to make it to Homestead, and there's a lot that can happen, and we're working as hard as anybody to see what we can do better."

One bad race—one slack tire, being caught in a crash, an inopportune failure in the pits—can eliminate a driver unless he manages to pair his ill fortune with a victory in one of the other two races in each segment. The champion could be winless. A driver running like Kenseth now could win more races in the Chase than anyone else and then see his title slip away by finishing second in the final race.

"You have to worry about what you have to do to advance to get to the next round every three weeks," Harvick, who mastered this maze in the only previous season it has been in place, said, "and whatever the scoreboard looks like, or whatever you have to do is whatever you have to do.

"It's not about making more friends."

Harvick was the boldest prognosticator of the bunch. He avoided words like "luck" and "timing."

"I don't know that we're the team to beat," he said Saturday night, "but I know that we can beat anybody as we go through a week-to-week basis on any style race track.

"The deal is about having fast cars and not making mistakes, but there are going to be some things happen, as we saw last year, circumstances you have to overcome...People are going to gamble...It's really not about having the fastest cars week in and week out. It's about capitalizing on situations."

On September 11, Edwards said, "I sat back and thought about this Chase format, and I thought, man, it doesn't matter what's happened to this point in the year. It doesn't matter what really happens all the way up to Phoenix and Homestead.

"You can stay in there and take the opportunities, and you can be the champion, and I think, for that reason, there will be a lot of guys really, really going for it. Just my sense is that the intensity level will be up this year."

It cannot be any other way. Regardless of what happens through nine races, the 10th will be run with four drivers tied by various means at the end of three elimination stages.

That fix is definitely in.

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All quotes are taken from NASCAR media, team and manufacturer sources unless otherwise noted.