Take 5: Five Takeaways From The Second Race In The Chase

Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports

Take 1 – The Chase field is still wide open.

Heading into Dover which is the final race in the opening round of the chase the field is still fairly wide open in the sense of any of the 16 drivers could advance. The current 16th seed is Aric Almirola and he is only 10 points behind the 12th place driver Ryan Newman. Denny Hamlin, Greg Biffle and Kurt Busch who are also in the danger area sitting 13th through 15th in the points are each eight points or less behind Newman. Those outside of advancing heading into Dover do not even have to rely on being better than Newman. Matt Kenseth, AJ Allmendinger, Carl Edwards and Kasey Kahne are all in front of Newman by two points or less. If Newman, Kahne, Allmendinger, Edwards or Kenseth struggle on Sunday it’s very possible one or a few of them will be knocked out of the chase. Even a guy like Jeff Gordon who is 21 points ahead of 13th place cannot be feeling super confident after what happened at the end of last weekends race. While I am not saying that everyone who is currently outside of the top-12 will make it in on Sunday, several of them do have a real shot.