HMS's best a go at 'Dega, but not top Roush drivers

Several years ago, when the Chase was first instituted, fans heard a lot about "mulligans." It was assumed that a driver could have one bad week during the 10-race playoff and still overcome it to win the championship. For the first three years, that was true, but last year, both Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon swept the top 15 in the final 10 races of the season. Only one could be the champion, even though both recorded a better average finish during the playoffs than any previous winner, and on the strength of four consecutive wins that went to Johnson.

In the short history of the Chase, it is getting increasingly difficult to win the championship. In 2004 and 2005, Kurt Busch and Tony Stewart recorded average finishes of 8.9 during the final 10 races. In 2006, Johnson got off to a slow start with a cut tire and 39th-place finish at New Hampshire, but he rapidly overcame that and finished with a 7.7 in the final 10 races. Last year, he had to post an average finish of 5.0 to claim the Cup -- and that narrowly beat Jeff Gordon's 5.1.

In 2008, a driver may very well have to sweep the top 10 in order to claim the Sprint Cup.

This year, Johnson, Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle each got off to a nearly faultless start with a perfect record of top-fives, three victories between them and a combined average finish of 2.3 -- and still no one has a clear picture of how the Chase is going to unfold. There is one reason for that: Talladega Superspeedway.

So much is out of the drivers' hands on this 2.66-mile restrictor-plate superspeedway, where drafting packs are often counted as the entire field and one mental error, part failure or blown engine can spell disaster for a quarter of the pack. Even without the threat of the Big One, this race would be a wild card. The capricious nature of the draft is such that a driver can be leading on one lap and struggling to stay in the top 20 on the next, so no Chase contender is safe until the checkered flag waves.

If a perfect record of top-10s is required this season, then Talladega success is going to be crucial and at the end of the season, this will be the race that everyone points to as the pivotal weekend.

The Favorites

Handicapping a race on the restrictor-plate superspeedways of Talladega and Daytona may be the most difficult tasks in sports. The normal variables exist: drivers who exceed expectations for a single week, engine and equipment reliability, pit miscues and mistakes that result in single-car spins. But the added unknown of the Big One that can effectively end the day of so many drivers and the seesaw draft will simply give you gray hair. Still, someone will win and someone is going to finish 43rd -- and both positions are equally difficult to predict.

While the Big One can happen anywhere in the field, simple math suggests that the closer a driver is to the lead when it erupts, the fewer cars there are to spin in front of him. That means one key predictor to success on the superspeedways is laps spent in the top 10. During the past five years, the drivers with the most top-10 laps read like a who's who of plate racing. (Continued)