Power Rankings: Kyle Busch keeps the top spot

1. Kyle Busch (LW: 1): Harvick led 143 laps to Busch’s 1. And he finished a spot ahead of Busch. But we’re keeping Kyle here because he’s made it to the final race of the Chase in title contention for the first time. That’s an achievement, especially for a driver who has had such Chase failures like Busch has. But enough about those, he’s going to get asked about them a lot over the week. He’s handling the pressure of the last nine weeks well. There’s no reason to think that he won’t handle the final week well too.

2. Kevin Harvick (LW: 2): There’s part of us that wonders if Harvick will pick Busch as a trash-talk target if he decides to throw a few verbal jabs at Media Day on Thursday. You can’t exactly try to trash talk Jeff Gordon and what are you going to say to Martin Truex Jr.? Busch is not only the only remaining competitor, but he and Harvick aren’t exactly the best of friends anyway. We’re betting, however, that Harvick will be a little different on Thursday.

3. Jeff Gordon (LW: 3): OK, NASCAR. Here’s your story to save the dreadfulness that has been the 2015 Chase so far. Will Gordon give NASCAR the moment it’s desperately wanting? While a Gordon title would be a great way for the four-time champion to end his career, it’d also be a perfect example of the randomness of the Chase. If you were ranking drivers over the course of the season, Gordon wouldn’t be in the top five.

4. Martin Truex Jr. (LW: 4): Here’s our fourth title contender. Yeah, the one-car team based in Denver storyline will be overrun this week, but we find something more interesting about Truex’s candidacy. He’s driving for a team that’s switching manufacturers at the end of the season in an attempt to further improve performance. While Brad Keselowski won the 2012 title in a Dodge, Penske was on an island and working on its cars themselves. Furniture Row Racing gets equipment from Richard Childress Racing, a stalwart Chevrolet team.

5. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (LW: 8): Congratulations to Dale Earnhardt and, more specifically, his crew chief Greg Ives. If Junior was pitted on the turn 1 side of the start/finish line at Phoenix, Kevin Harvick probably wins the race. Instead, Junior was in front of the start/finish line and ended up being scored as the leader after the cars that didn’t pit under green headed to pit road. We won’t beat the dead horse here, but if the caution came out just a bit later at Talladega, Junior would be one of the final four drivers.

6. Joey Logano (LW: 7): While Kurt Busch has a huge “what if?” gripe given the rule that he violated on the start of Sunday’s race, Logano’s game is pretty massive too. Logano has been one of the best drivers over the past two seasons at restarts. And he had a pretty fast car throughout the entirety of Sunday’s race. He would have restarted third had the race gone green. It’s not crazy to think he would have been in a heads-up battle with Kevin Harvick for the chance to run for the title again.

7. Jimmie Johnson (LW: 6): Johnson finished fifth after starting on the pole. His fifth-place run was his fourth top-five in the nine races since the track has been repaved. He’s still been pretty damn good there (he has other finishes of sixth and 11th), but it’s not like the dominance he showed on the old pavement. Before the track was repaved, Johnson had finished outside the top 10 twice in 16 races. And those two finishes were 15th-place ones. Damn.

8. Kurt Busch (LW: 10): Look, Busch violated a rule at the start of Sunday’s race. The second-place car can’t beat the polesitter to the start and he did just that. But it’s a cruel punishment when you see that the same scenario happened in the spring Phoenix race and went unpunished. Yeah NASCAR said it was taking a closer look at starts and restarts during the Chase. But unlike restarts, which have a lot of room for variance, what Logano did in the spring race in beating Harvick to the line was a cut and dried penalty. He escaped, while Busch got the wrath of NASCAR. Oh, by the way, he finished seventh. Hell of a comeback.

9. Brad Keselowski (LW: 5): We applaud Brad Keselowski for sticking to the theme that the Chase’s entertainment value trumps fairness. It does, and that search for entertainment leaves it open to being underwhelming like it is currently. The old Chase format had elimination built in. While all drivers were still theoretically part of the Chase at Homestead, the self-selection that happened over the previous nine races left just a handful or less of drivers racing for the title every year. This format with forced elimination guarantees a close title race, but that’s about it.

10. Carl Edwards (LW: 9): Edwards soooooo wanted to keep racing Sunday night. He was two spots ahead of Martin Truex Jr. and needed to make up five points. There’s no guarantee he could have done that, but it would have been a fascinating subplot to what would likely have been a pretty good fight for the lead and a Chase berth. Instead, Edwards was left to wallow in the rain and, again, lose a title thanks to mother nature. Remember, in 2011 when he was racing Tony Stewart at Homestead for the title, a rain shower helped Stewart get track position late in the race to fend off Edwards.

11. Denny Hamlin (LW: NR): Hamlin finished eighth at Phoenix. And honestly, he’s here because we’re out of drivers to put in the top 12. Jamie McMurray finished towards the bottom part of the top 20. Ryan Newman was 11th. Paul Menard was 13th. In case you were wondering, Carl Edwards has a 15-point lead on Joey Logano for the not-at-all-important bonus for finishing in fifth.

12. Erik Jones (LW: 12): Jones finished 19th on Sunday after qualifying seventh. Two top-20 finishes isn’t a bad way to sub for a championship driver. Now we just need to see if Joe Gibbs Racing wants to pull Edwards out of the No. 19 this week to let Jones see time in all four of its Cup cars this year. Yeah, it won’t happen, but it’d be pretty cool and funny to see.