OPINION

By Reid Spencer

updated 4:55 p.m. ET June 3, 2008

DOVER, Del. - We're 13 races into the NASCAR Sprint Cup season — halfway to the Chase — and the most remarkable aspect of the 2008 season is how far the balance of power has shifted in Cup racing.

At this point in 2007, Chevrolet had won 12 of the 13 races, with Matt Kenseth's victory in a Ford at California the only one for a non-Chevy team. Hendrick Motorsports drivers had won nine times, with four victories coming from Jimmie Johnson, three from Jeff Gordon and one each from Casey Mears and Kyle Busch, who by early June had already worn out his welcome at Hendrick.

Carl Edwards wouldn't win until his 15th start of the season, at Michigan, as Roush Fenway Racing's lack of testing in NASCAR's new racecar made it glaringly apparent how far behind the organization had been at the start of the 2007 season.

Through 13 races in 2007, Toyota hadn't been close enough to a victory even to dream about winning a race.

It didn't take long, however, for Hendrick's aura of invincibility to evaporate in 2008. Uncharacteristically inconsistent, the Hendrick teams have struggled this season, particularly at intermediate tracks. Johnson fought an ornery car to a 29th-place finish at Las Vegas, a track where he had won the previous three races. Gordon tried to knock down the Turn 4 wall at Texas and finished dead last in a car that was undrivable.

Gordon and Johnson have recovered since those episodes, to stand sixth and seventh in the championship standings, respectively. But it's a far cry from last year, when they were first and second after 13 races.

Everything is different. In its second season in Cup racing, Toyota has five wins — all from Joe Gibbs Racing (which switched manufacturers from Chevrolet in the offseason) and four of them from Busch, a man driven to prove that owner Rick Hendrick made a mistake in kicking him to the curb.

Busch is almost at the point of being able to take a race off and still retain the points lead. Only Jeff Burton's streak of 13 straight top-13 finishes has kept the driver of the No. 31 Chevy 142 points behind the leader.

Third-place Dale Earnhardt Jr., the driver who replaced Busch at Hendrick, ran out of luck in Sunday's Best Buy 400 at Dover International Speedway, thanks to an 11-car pile-up on Lap 17 that dropped him to a 35th-place finish and left him 271 points out of first place.

As dominant as Busch has been, the Roush Fenway cars also have shown marked improvement over last year's sluggish start. Edwards has won three times and finished second twice, overcoming a 100-point penalty for an oil tank cover infraction at Las Vegas to stand fourth in points, 337 behind Busch.

Teammate Greg Biffle hasn't won a race, but five top-five finishes have propelled him to fifth in points, 392 back. That makes Earnhardt the only Hendrick driver within 400 points of the runaway leader.

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There may or may not be statistical significance to this, but bear in mind that the driver who scored the most points through 13 races last year (Gordon) is the same guy who scored the most points through 26 (before NASCAR reseeded the Chase according to victories, giving Johnson the lead).

And with the exception of the first Chase year in 2004, when Kurt Busch won the title from the seventh position entering the "playoffs," the driver who has won the championship in the three succeeding years has been seeded either first or second at the start of the Chase.

It's a rarity for a team to catch lightning in a bottle during the Chase at the expense of a team that has laid a solid foundation all season long.

So, though it may be a little early to order a crown for Kyle Busch, it wouldn't be a bad idea to start taking his measurements.

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