Johnny Benson

The Chase for the Sprint Cup begins Sunday at New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon, nicknamed the Magic Mile, and it’s a 1-mile oval where Jimmie Johnson could very well find enough magic of his own to get to Victory Lane in the first event of the 10-race playoff to decide the series champion.

Johnson is one of 12 drivers to qualify for the Chase, and he has the chance to do something special -- win his third consecutive Sprint Cup title. I figure him to be one of three favorites in the playoff – the others being Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch. Neither Edwards nor Busch has ever won a championship at NASCAR’s top level but they have had to date the two most impressive Sprint Cup seasons.

As the standings leader after the 26 races that led to the cutoff for qualifying for the Chase, Busch begins the playoff as the top seed. He has a series-high eight wins.  Edwards is the second seed by virtue of his five wins as to start the Chase NASCAR resets the points totals of the 12 drivers who have qualified to a minimum of 5,000 points and a driver gets 10 additional points for each race he won prior to the start of the playoff.

Johnson, who has made it to Victory Lane the last two weeks with impressive performances in California and in Virginia, is the third seed off his four wins this season. For those who like to see history repeat itself that may happen with Johnson this year as in 2007 he won both the Fontana and Richmond events and that propelled him to the Sprint Cup title.

Of the other nine drivers in the Chase field only four have taken the checkers this season and each of those four – Dale Earnhardt Jr., Clint Bowyer, Denny Hamlin, and Jeff Burton – has but one win this year.

The other five drivers in the Chase – Tony Stewart, Greg Biffle, Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick and Matt Kenseth have not won a race in 2008.

Anything can happen over the 10 weeks the Chase is run but there’s no question heading into the playoff the best bets to win the title are the trio of Johnson, Edwards and Busch. Johnson has not had the eye-popping season he did a year ago when he won 10 races but the two-time reigning series champ has run so well of late he’s basically served notice that to win this year’s title someone will have to try and out run him. Teamed with his tremendous crew chief Chad Knaus, Johnson could once again claim glory at the season-ending event at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Special feature 2008 season review Take an in-depth look at each of NASCAR's top-12 drivers in 2008.

Busch bolted from his relative inexperience in NASCAR’s top series (this is just his fourth season of Cup racing) to become the runaway star of the circuit. He did so by at times pushing the boundaries of sound judgment on the track and drawing the ire of some of his fellow drivers but there’s no denying – that while he has cooled somewhat of late – he’s shown himself to be a top championship contender.

Edwards is an outstanding talent who must be closely watched in the playoff since he performs best at intermediate, 1.5-mile tracks and five of the 10 Chase races are at intermediate tracks.

Working in Johnson’s favor at Loudon
The El Cajon, Calif. native is no stranger to success in New England as he swept the New Hampshire races in 2003. Besides those two wins he also has three top-fives and eight top-10s in 13 Cup starts at the Magic Mile.

In this event last year he started fourth and brought his Chevrolet home to just outside a top-five result, the No. 48 car of Hendrick Motorsports crossing the checkers sixth. And in the first New Hampshire race this season, Johnson impressively worked his way up from a starting spot of No. 23 to a top-10 finish, coming home ninth.

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