1. Kyle Busch  The one type of track this team hasn’t figured out are the flats, and it showed at New Hampshire. He’ll make up for it at Daytona this weekend.

2. Dale Earnhardt Jr.  Looked like a force early at NHMS but a kick in the pants courtesy of Jamie McMurray changed all that.

3. Carl Edwards  Carl was the highest finishing Ford driver in Loudon, where he finished 17th. I guess that’s not really saying much, but his 10 top 10s in the last 12 races is.

4. Jeff Burton  The weekly Jeff Burton Top-15 Counter stands at 23 straight. By the way, congrats on the new sponsor, Jeff.

5. Jimmie Johnson  Don’t look now but Jimmie has four top-10 showings in the last five weeks. The fifth was a 15th at Infineon.

6. Matt Kenseth  18th in New Hampshire ended his streak of six consecutive finishes of eighth or better. We’ll see what Daytona has in store for the Killer Bees.

7. Kasey Kahne  This is a hard group to figure. They either finish in the top 2 or somewhere in the 30s. That type of inconsistency does not win championships.

8. Jeff Gordon  Once again Gordon pulls a respectable finish out of nowhere. It’s tricks like that that find the 24 sixth in the point standings.

9. Tony Stewart  Only an act of God could keep Tony out of Victory Lane at Loudon — and guess who showed up with about 20 laps to go?

10. Kevin Harvick  Two tough weeks for the 29. He had a top 5 sown up at Sonoma before wrecking late and was legit top 10 at NMHS before the rain.

11. Brian Vickers  Had a really good car before the rains came, which docked him back to 16th. Makes you wonder where he’d have finished otherwise.

12. Denny Hamlin  Snakebit team finally has something to cheer about after an eighth-place run in Loudon.

13. Clint Bowyer  It’s getting harder and harder to justify this team’s rankings every week. Bowyer is squarely on the Chase bubble heading into a crapshoot at Daytona.

14. Casey Mears  Is a pink slip what it took for Mears to record seventh- and fifth-place runs? So it seems.

15. Greg Biffle  Eighth in points, so he’s doing something right. But you wouldn’t know it by his recent results.

Just off the lead pack: Kurt Busch, Mark Martin, Ryan Newman, David Ragan, Martin Truex Jr.

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