In my opinion the drivers who are currently second and third in the championship standings, Jimmie Johnson and Greg Biffle, also are in.

Johnson is 373 points ahead of 11th place while Biffle has a 337-point gap to 11th, and like Stewart they would have to give up maximum points in three of the five races to fall out of the top 10.

And while it’s certainly not impossible for that to happen, given the way the pair have run this season I sure can’t see it taking place.

At risk
So if the top three drivers in the championship standings are in, and if from 15th place on down in the standings those drivers are out, that leaves 11 drivers competing for seven spots in the Chase over the five upcoming races.

These drivers I’ll say are at risk since they do not yet have a solid grasp on making the Chase.

We begin with the fourth, fifth and sixth place drivers in the championship standings: Rusty Wallace, Kurt Busch and Mark Martin.

The three have about as big a points lead on 11th place as Matt Kenseth and Junior have a points deficit to 10th.

So why do I think the three are not a sure thing to make the Chase?

Well, a bad race will cost these drivers points to not just the 11th place driver but to all of the drivers trailing them in the standings.

Rusty Wallace enters the Watkins Glen race with a 230-point advantage on 11th-place, but if he were to lose maximum points to that spot in just one race, that 230-point margin shrinks to just 74 points.

On top of that many of the other drivers currently closest to Wallace in the standings likely would pass him, shuffling him down close to 10th place and into a real danger zone.

I don’t call a one-race pad any kind of margin for comfort, thus I put Wallace among those at risk.

Ditto those comments for Busch and Martin, who are 171 and 161 points respectively ahead of 11th place.

From seventh to 14th place it’s anybody’s game.

The seventh-place driver, Ryan Newman, is only 93 points up on 11th place, while eighth-place Jeremy Mayfield is only 79 points ahead of 11th.

That margin can go away in a hurry.

Dale Jarrett and Carl Edwards are only 18 and 12 points respectively ahead of 11th place, and points-wise that's only a matter of a few finishing positions in a race.

How’s that for pressure?

Currently on the outside of the playoff looking in, the 11th through 14th place drivers are still in great position to challenge to make it into the Chase.

There’s Jamie McMurray, only 12 points out of 10th, Elliott Sadler just 24 behind in 12th, followed by Kevin Harvick and Jeff Gordon, 82 and 87 points back respectively.

Gordon is the driver out of this group that people will follow the closest over the upcoming five weeks.

Erasing the 87-point deficit is very doable for Gordon, but I don't believe it will happen all at once.

Gordon will have to score top-10 and top-five finishes in this tough upcoming stretch, but there are too many drivers between himself and 10th place to gain it in a big chunk.

The gap between all of these drivers is so close that the pressure on this group will be huge over these next five weeks.

There’s no room for error.

Sadler is a perfect example. He won the pole for the Indianapolis race on Aug. 7 and ran in the top six for most of the day. Then with just eight laps to go, a suspected flat tire brought Sadler to pit road and left him with a 32nd-place finish.

In an instant, Sadler went from being in the Chase to being out of it -- from ninth place to 12th.

Ouch.

With this many drivers this close together and so few races to go, every position, every lap, and every point will keep drivers and their teams strained and stressed.

It'll be tough on them, but dramatic for racing fans to watch.

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