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So when is the perfect time to get hot? And have some teams simply peaked too early, or has the Chase for the Nextel Cup formula altered late-season racing to a degree that it's impossible to tell which teams are on top of their game and which ones are just playing for bonus points?
While some are making obvious advances, the results of others are somewhat misleading. For example, it's obvious that Kurt Busch and his Penske Racing team are hitting their stride at the right time. With finishes of 11th or better in the last eight races, the group has not only moved into Chase contention, but is now 11th in the standings.
Roush Fenway Racing's Carl Edwards has picked up the pace in recent weeks, as has Hendrick Motorsports Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Inc.'s Martin Truex Jr.
And what about Jimmie Johnson? An early-season favorite, he went winless from May until September, when he not only returned to the top of the field but also to the top of the winner's column with five victories. That number will give him no worse than a tie for the championship lead when the Chase for the Nextel Cup field is set late Saturday night.
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Yet, how much can be read into the statistics?
After all, just look at Hendrick Motorsports' Jeff Gordon. Certainly it would be difficult to say that his team is struggling or that he's fallen off the pace. Yet he has three consecutive finishes of 19th or worse. And he stands to give up the points lead for the first time since March if he does not win Saturday night's race.
After that event, NASCAR reseeds the top 12 with 10 bonus points awarded for each victory by a Chase competitor in the season's opening 26 races. Right now, that would boost Johnson past Gordon, who has only four victories.
It seems a shame that the driver with a 349-point advantage could drop out of the lead in a matter of days. It seems more stunning, though, that Gordon could be facing questions about his recent "slump."
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Gordon himself laughs off the concept of his peak being a part of the past. There was a time when the Hendrick contingent legitimately worried that the season's peak might be coming too quickly. When they won eight of the season's opening 11 races (Johnson won four, Gordon three and Kyle Busch one in that stretch), the team did talk about hitting its stride too early, about momentum swings that could work against them as the season wore on.
But that didn't really happen. While all the Nextel Cup drivers have endured setbacks from time to time this season, Gordon's recent stretch can be credited solely to his team's attitude shift over the recent stretch of races.
He had nothing to lose and everything to gain. So he gambled on the wins, raced with strategies he wouldn't normally employ and still found himself with a strong car week to week.
Is he concerned about the recent slide?
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"It's like this," Gordon said after finishing 22nd at California Speedway. "None of these races mean a whole lot. And so we'd like to be running better and be out there getting bonus points, but this team is going to come with a whole different focus and attitude when we get to New Hampshire (for the first Chase race).
"I'll be honest. It's kind of hard to be in this position where it really doesn't matter, yet you're a competitor and you go out there and you run hard and try to lead laps and win races. But you know in the back of your mind that it really doesn't mean anything."
In another week, Gordon's confident his team will return to the form that put them in the top 10 in 20 of the season's opening 25 races.
Johnson, meanwhile, believes that things are going well at the perfect moment.
"There is obviously a lot of racing left and a lot of good teams fighting for this Chase," he says. "We are hitting our stride at the right time."
It's difficult to tell who is in top form right now, though. Kurt Busch's team has won two of the last five races and, while they're not locked into the Chase yet, has moved into the role of a darkhorse championship favorite if they do make the championship segment. All he needs is a finish of 36th or better Saturday night at Richmond to earn the chance to chase his second title.
The last time Kyle Busch finished outside the top 15 was at Dover in June, when he was 17th. Matt Kenseth has finished 14th or better in eight of the last nine races. Edwards has been top two in the last pair, top eight in the last four. Stewart's 13th-place finish at California ended a stretch of six straight top-10 finishes that also included three wins. Truex Jr. has finished 11th or better in the last four races.
So who is hot? It looks like most of the field is, actually.
That's what makes the Chase so difficult to predict, that's what could make this championship run so tantalizing. Unquestionably Gordon has been the class of the field all season. But his is just one of several teams capable of hitting a stretch and reeling off a string of top-five finishes, of visiting victory lane repeatedly throughout the Chase.
Now, it's just a matter of who can maintain the momentum in the final 10 races. Once the Chase starts, previous wins and past streaks no longer matter.
"It's probably going to be one of the toughest Chases that you've ever seen with a lot of good cars," says team owner Rick Hendrick. "So it's going to be a dogfight with all 12 of them."
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