To make the Chase good, I’d expect a handful of drivers, say the top five, to have distinguished themselves six races into the Chase. Instead, at least three of the top five spots have changed hands each race since New Hampshire, the first Chase race.
Only Kasey Kahne has not once appeared in the top five in the Chase standings. Kahne has not been able to recover the ground he lost at Dover after an early wreck left him with a 38th-place finish. Three different drivers have held the lead; Matt Kenseth is back there again, a position he hasn’t held since the Chase began.
It’s a weekly jumble. From that perspective, it’s been a competitive Chase, but not a good one. No one has distinguished themselves; no cream has risen. Instead, it rises, falls and rises again — or sometimes it doesn’t.
Kenseth believes it’s the least competitive Chase of the three versions we’ve seen. (Though I can’t help but think his ‘competitive’ is the same as my ‘good’.)
“Everyone thinks this is the most competitive one,” Kenseth told the AP, “but I kind of look at it the other way — it’s the sloppiest Chase we’ve had so far. The least competitive one. Nobody has been able to run in the top 10 every week. No one is putting up staggering numbers, or that dominating streak we saw the first two years. With no trouble, Jeff Burton is probably the runaway winner of this thing. But, what we’re seeing this year, is none of us are immune from trouble.”
Certainly, a good game (or Chase) has a lot of factors that have a pretty specific range to them. Solid drivers and teams? Check. Good track record and solid performance through the season? Check.
But so far, the Chase comes up short in the actual competition, just as two good football teams can play a stinker of a game. Except they call it winning ugly.
Whoever emerges from Homestead will certainly have won ugly.
• A LATER UPDATE tomorrow, sometime in the mid-afternoon. It’s hard to believe college basketball season is upon us, but here we are. (It’s been even harder to let go of the final moments of polo-shirt weather, but that’s just me.)
I’m off to the Colonial Athletic Association’s basketball media day tomorrow in D.C. That will take up the morning and stretch into the afternoon, so I won’t get online until later in the day.