by Ryan McGee

The good news — Kenseth quickly did away with all the talk about only winning one race during his 2003 title-winning campaign by winning two races in the season's first three weeks. The bad news — he didn't win again over the next 33 weekends.

Powered by his typically understated and consistent style, Kenseth stayed in the top five in points from week two to week two7, cruising his way into the final 10 races. But once the gun went off to start The Chase, it apparently put a bullet in Kenseth's radiator. He earned only one top 10 — a runner-up effort at Loudon — and fell as far as ninth in points before bobbing back up to grab eighth over the final two weekends.

"Our chance to repeat really ended at Dover just two weeks into the deal," he says, referring to an uncharacteristic mistake that left him on top of the water barrels at the entrance to pit road. "And then we had engine problems at Atlanta and Phoenix. I don't know if we have ever had two blown engines in two weeks before. But when that deal at Dover happened, we just wanted to get the year over and get on with 2005. We had some high points, but I made mistakes as a driver that I just don't usually make. I can't make those again."

Why He Will Finish Third

In this day and age, Cup champs simply don't repeat (see the ninth-place driver in our countdown, Kurt Busch) so Kenseth's run of bad luck wasn't completely unexpected. A remarkable number of champs have fallen from first to sixth over the last decade, and Tony Stewart tumbled from first to seventh in 2003.

But a guy like Kenseth simply doesn't have two off years in a row. And with the departure of Jeff Burton and looming retirement of Mark Martin, Kenseth suddenly finds himself in the role of grizzled old veteran at Roush Racing. And as Mark Martin's tenure has proven, that vet is typically the massive organization's focal point once the leaves start turning and the weekends tick down to Homestead.

"I look back and see all of the strange things that happened to us and laugh," says longtime crew chief Robbie Reiser. "In 2003, every break seemed to go our way. Last year, not a single thing went our way. You figure even if we average those two out this season, we will be in position to make The Chase."

And as their teammate proved last fall, once you make The Chase, anyone and everyone is a contender.

The All-Telling, All-Knowing Stat: 71

That's the number of consecutive weeks Kenseth has spent inside the top 10 in points, a streak that began during week two of the 2003 season. Thirty-seven of those 71 weeks have been spent in the top spot. He's only had to live outside of the top 10 for one week over the last 106 races, when he sat 19th for seven days after finishing 20th in the 2003 Daytona 500.

Fantasy Lock: Las Vegas

His Sin City career got off to sinful start with a generic average effort of 15th in three tries, but he has more than made up for it since. He is currently riding a two-race win streak on the 1.5-mile quad-oval, dominating both events to the tune of 211 laps led, tops among all drivers.

Ryan McGee is the managing editor at NASCAR Images and Senior Producer of NASCAR Nation on SPEED Channel. He can be reached at his e-mail address: rmcgee@foxsports.com.