Who's done in the 2011 Chase......

After Chicago I'm writing Kenseth off. He's in a significant hole under the new points system (24pts = half a race) and people shouldn't expect anything out of him at New Hampshire and Martinsville. For him to win the championship a slip up like Chicago couldn't happen.

Denny Hamlin is also done. His Chicagoland performance was a mirror of how 2011 has gone for him. He's 41 points back and that's basically a whole race.

Things have to go really, really in Jeff Gordon's favor for him as well. I'm trying to determine from the numbers what would make it possible. The last 10 races last year Johnson, Hamlin and Harvick averaged 6 - 7 place average finish. Scoring 380 - 388 points (in 2011 points). Edwards (the next best) had an average finish of 11.4 and scored 340 points. That's 40 - 48 points in the hole just for a 4 - 5 place average finish worse. So I think for Gordon to erase his 25 point deficit he would need to have around a 3 - 4 position better average finish then those ahead of him right now through the remainder of the nine races.

Taking a look at the previous 9 races this year Jeff Gordon had an average finish of 7.7 and scored 339 points. During that time he score 18 more points than Ryan Newman who had an average finish of 9.2 (a 1.5 worse average finish than Gordon).

Same period Jeff outscored Tony Stewart by 31 total points. Tony had an average finish of 10.4 (a 2.7 worse average finish than Gordon).

I might be totally smoking crack here...but is seems like that's a hell of a hole.

One more bad run and you can stick a fork in the 24. I think he still has a heart beat though.