Top three in points also the favorites going into Kansas

NASCAR has done an admirable job of making the Chase reflect the regular season. In the final 10 races, every track type except road courses and 2-mile unrestricted, intermediate speedways are represented and next year Fontana will replace Atlanta on the schedule to take care one of those absences.

The first two races in the Chase were contested on a flat track and a high-banked concrete course. This week the similarly configured, 1.5-mile Kansas Speedway offers a different challenge and next week the series rolls onto the restrictor-plate track at Talladega. These are establishment races and to be designated as one of the favorites to win the Chase, a driver has to run well in all four. Winning the Sprint Cup championship requires a driver to be the best-rounded in all of motorsports.

Kansas will also set the tone in another way. This is the first of four "cookie-cutter" races and after they leave Talladega, drivers will tackle Lowe's, Atlanta and Texas in a brief span of a month. Unfortunately, the Camping World RV 400 (1 p.m. ET Sunday, ABC) at Kansas presents a unique problem for fantasy owners because this track can either be extremely kind or downright nasty to the Chasers.

In 2005, the 10 Chase contenders left Kansas City with an average finish of 8.1 and claimed seven of the top-10 spots, which made that race the single best outing for Chasers in the brief four-year history of this format. Last year, Chasers averaged a finish of 23.5 and seven of the 12 drivers finished 29th or worse, which made it the second worst day for the playoff contenders.

Of the seven Chasers who used a mulligan in this race last year, most were slowed or sidelined by crash damage, so as long as they can keep their collective noses clean, the tight points battle should continue for another week.

The Favorites

Greg Biffle could very well win three consecutive races to start the Chase. New Hampshire should have been a challenge for the No. 16 team, but once that hurdle was cleared, Biffle had to be taken seriously. With an average finish of 12.1 in 12 races at Dover entering last week's race, that track was his fourth-best. He's been even better at Kansas, with an average finish of 11.0 in six starts, which makes this "cookie-cutter" course his third-best. Biffle's victory in this race last year was shrouded in controversy after he apparently ran out of fuel coming to the checkers under yellow and crossed the finish line fourth, but there was no argument about his third-place finish in 2004 or his second in 2005.

Of course, Biffle could win a third Chase race and still not have the points lead because both Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards have been stellar on the similarly configured, 1.5-mile tracks. Johnson is a master of this track type and last year he won four of the nine races run on the doglegged 1.5-milers. This year, he has yet to win at these venues, but he came close with a pair of seconds at Texas and Chicagoland. Having won the last two regular-season events and finishing second and fifth in the first two Chase races, he enters the weekend with four consecutive top-fives and shows no signs of slowing down.

Edwards assumed the point lead last week with his second consecutive third-place finish and he also ended the regular season on a high note by winning three of the final five oval-track races. Last year, he was one of the unfortunate Chasers when he got collected in a Lap 181 crash involving Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch, but the two Kansas races prior to that were solid. Edwards finished third in 2005 during a virtual sweep of the top-five by Roush Racing and he was sixth in 2006. (Continued)