2. Mark Martin  That said, here sits the eternal underdog, 74 points back and returning to a track that he dominated at in the Spring.

3. Jeff Gordon  Did Hendrick Motorsports give Gordon one of Junior’s cars for Texas?

4. Tony Stewart  A sixth at Texas was his seventh run of 14th or better in eight Chase races. That’s not been good enough to keep pace with the likes of Johnson — and it’s probably the media’s fault.

5. Juan Pablo Montoya  That “play it conservative” strategy seemed to work better than the “go for broke” mentality.

6. Denny Hamlin  Denny’s Texas run proved there’s more than one way to get good fuel mileage — via a meeting with the wall.

7. Kurt Busch  Kurt & the boys always manage to smart their way into Victory Lane at least once a season.

8. Matt Kenseth  It’s all in the numbers: His third-place finish at Texas was his third run of third or better in the Chase. Logic dictates that his third win of the season could be around the corner.

9. Kyle Busch  Welcome to the bigs, Dave Rogers, where a crew chief has to take the heat when his driver decides he’s too PO’d to talk to anyone after a race. Come to think of it, I guess that’s been the protocol between driver and crew chief in the Nationwide Series for months now.

10. Clint Bowyer  For all the talk of RCR’s demise, Bowyer has only finished outside of the top 15 twice during the Chase. That’s only once more than Jimmie Johnson!

11. Kasey Kahne  Is it just me, or is this teams’ head elsewhere … like under the hood of a Ford back at the shop.

12. Greg Biffle  They may have just lucked into back-to-back top 10s, but my gut tells me that, like Kenseth’s bunch, the 16 may have finally found something.

13. Ryan Newman  He even manages to finish in the seventh-15^th-place range in fuel mileage races. It’s uncanny.

14. Jeff Burton  Whatever they’re doing differently, it seems to be working, as evidenced by JB’s four straight top-15 finishes.

15. Kevin Harvick  And Harvick’s three top 10s in the last five races back up that claim.

Just off the lead pack: Marcos Ambrose, Carl Edwards, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Joey Logano, David Reutimann