by Larry McReynolds

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Quietly, Matt Kenseth just nips at your heels. He may not win a single race in the Chase, but he'll top-five you to death. By scoring 16 top 10's and 13 top fives, Kenseth is doing what it takes to win this year's championship.

When you look at the group of cars in the Chase, you had better not have any DNF's, and you'd better have several top fives with a lot of top 10's. Top 10's and top 15's aren't going to win the title. It's going to take three or four top fives to go along with six or seven top 10's to get the championship.

Six drivers, led by Kenseth, are going to be tough and have the potential to make the Chase finale at Homestead as nail-biting as the Race to the Chase ending at Richmond.

2) Jimmie Johnson: The one team that concerns me is the No. 48 group. Since finishing second to Kasey Kahne at Lowe's Motor Speedway in May, Johnson only has one top-five finish, a win at the Brickyard. I don't know if the No. 48 team is holding anything back, but that better be the case if they want to win this championship.

3) Kevin Harvick: The No. 29 enters the Chase with a lot of momentum. Harvick has outscored everybody in points the last 10 races.

4) Kyle Busch: The Chase field had better keep an eye on Busch, or he will slide into the top spot and win the championship. Like Harvick, the second-year driver has momentum with two runner-up finishes in the last three races. He also has six top-10 finishes in the eight races since winning at New Hampshire in July.

5) Denny Hamlin: Since they won the second Pocono race and cracked the top 10, the No. 11 team has been playing defense with their setups and strategy. Crew chief Mike Ford has been around a long time and knows how to win championships. With the exception of the spark plug wire problem at Richmond, Hamlin is on a heck of a roll. The competition is so close now that Hamlin lost ground at Fontana after finishing sixth but gained ground with a 15th-place finish at Richmond.

10) Kasey Kahne: In the last two races, the No. 9 team came back from 90 points back to get into the Chase. Against this level of competition, that's phenomenal. It's one reason that I have to put them on top of the chart as a serious championship contender.

Changing Chase points

Ron from Panama City Beach, Fla.: Larry Mac, what about just giving an additional 10 to 15 points for winning and then let those drivers take their bonus points into the Chase for the Nextel Cup? The bonus points would be held in escrow, so to speak. Then if a driver makes it into the Chase, they use their bonus points to ultimately decide first through 10th place.

Larry McReynolds: On SPEED's NASCAR Victory Lane, NASCAR President Mike Helton confirmed what NASCAR Chairman Brian France discussed in July. The Nextel Cup Series is definitely looking at potential tweaks, not just in the 26 races leading up to the Chase, but in the 10 Chase races as well. They are considering the idea of giving more points for winning, but I don't know that they will tweak anything else. NASCAR is pretty darn happy with the current system, and they should be.

After 26 races, the Race to the Chase came down to the last few laps. Is Denny Hamlin going to be OK with his spark plug wire? Are Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon going to run out of brakes? When a 26-race season comes down to that kind of drama between five, six or seven drivers, I'm not sure how much work the Chase needs.

From day one in 1948, NASCAR has been about consistency, and that shouldn't go away. Drivers still should be rewarded for consistency, but there should be a bigger reward for winning than just 10 points more than the second-place team. That's especially true this year when a driver like Kasey Kahne, who has already won five races, nearly missed the Chase.

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I would like to see would be a separate point system for the 10 teams in the Chase, which would add excitement to the final 10 races of the season. The top Chase finisher would earn 10 points followed by nine for second, eight for third and so on among the 10 Chasers. They're still racing the other 33 cars every week, but if a Chase contender got caught up in a big wreck at Talladega or lost an engine at Texas, he wouldn't be out of the hunt.

When we get to Homestead, it's usually down to two or three guys for the title. With a 10-point system, five, six or seven teams could have a legitmate shot at the title. I don't know how much better than that it could get. It would almost be like six teams playing each other in the Super Bowl to see who wins the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

NASCAR doesn't need to reinvent the wheel because what they have works pretty well. On SPEED's NASCAR Victory Lane, Jeff Hammond asked Helton if the reigning champion should make the Chase automatically. I disagree with that idea. The Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl last year. They were the best NFL team in 2005, but they still have to earn their way back into the playoffs to have a chance to defend their title.

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FOX race analyst Larry McReynolds has more than 25 years of NASCAR experience as a mechanic, crew chief and broadcaster. He and his fellow Crew Chief Club members take you behind the wall at www.crewchiefclub.com.

"How to Become a Winning Crew Chief" is on bookstore shelves, or you may order your own autographed copy from www.DWStore.com.