NASCAR’s 2015 title ‘Chase’ begins Sunday in Chicago

The Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, the sanctioning body’s 10-race, season-ending playoff round, has officially begun at Chicagoland Speedway, site of Sunday’s myAFibRisk.com 400. He made the final round a year ago in part because those final four races are at some of his best tracks. A win in any of the first three segments guarantees a driver a spot in the next round; four drivers are eliminated every three races. Matt Kenseth is listed at 8-1 odds to win this weekend and he should have a strong following in the grandstands as the Chicago track is the closest the circuit comes to his large Wisconsin home-state fan base.

Chicagoland Speedway now will have two Saturday races.

Logano has won what he considers the two biggest races of the season with the Daytona 500 and the Bristol night race, so the championship would be the flawless way to cap off a dream season. It would be weird if he has the most wins and still doesn’t capture the title for the second time in three years.

He’s been easy to overlook given how powerful the Joe Gibbs and Roger Penske cars have been driving, but Junior appears to be doing the one thing you want at this time of year: peaking. Some teams find more than others and are able to pick it up a lot. “I feel like we’re as good as any team out there”.

Johnson is tied with Busch and Kenseth as the top seeds in a field of 16 drivers. This year Keselowski and the #2 team have upped their game at the right time as he rides a streak of nine straight top ten finishes into the Chase.

Logano is starting in second for Sunday’s race.

So it’s apparent as Gordon counts down from 10 to the end of his NASCAR career that he isn’t the kid who changed the business. Here’s a breakdown of the four likely, probable, questionable and doubtful drivers in the Chase.

“In my grid he makes it to the round of eight, but not to the final round”. But, for that to happen, Gordon needs to make it that far through the first two rounds.

“Coming in past year , knowing that everything has to be absolutely flawless and all the stars are aligning just to win a race, that’s no way to come in”, said Kenseth. Inconsistency has plagued Bowyer all season long, and he’s never appeared to be a contender. He was good throughout most of the regular season and by most accounts is driving better at age 40 than any other time of his career. If an eligible driver wins a race in a given round, they automatically advance to the next round. However, this week the old aerodynamic rules are back and under them, Johnson won three of the first four races held on the 1.5 mile ovals.

NASCAR apparently plans to both reposition some at-track cameras to give the officials in the tower a better look at restarts, and there will be a dedicated official who will monitor the restart zone area.

It didn’t take Kevin Harvick long to start trying to rile the NASCAR drivers standing in his way of a second consecutive Sprint Cup title. Surprisingly, he’s got only one win on the year – at Fontana in March – and he led only one lap in that race. The 2014 and reigning NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Champion has two wins and great stats at Chicagoland Speedway and is ready to defend his championship against any team.

PRACTICE PATIENCE: Denny Hamlin knows exactly what he needs to do Sunday, and he isn’t sure how easy it’ll be at the start of the race.

Johnson put the blame on Clint Bowyer and Matt Kenseth for kicking off the birthday celebration. “We have some momentum with the top 10s lately, but we need to turn some of those into wins – and we know that”.

Ryan Newman: Knows how to advance through Chase without winning races, as he did in 2014.

“Obviously having the first pit stall and having good track position to start is important”, he added. “The team and all the hard work that Tony Gibson and his guys have put in, I am just so proud to drive with him”.

But the No. 20 stuck together, and the results have paid off. We minimized mistakes. When we had a 15th-place vehicle , that’s where we finished and sometimes overachieved a little bit by making some adjustments at the end that helped us.