Chase Bubble: Pocono

As the Race to the Chase for the Nextel Cup draws to a close, so does the opportunity to lock down one of the 12 spots in it, and beginning this weekend at Pocono Raceway, the Bubble Watch is officially under way.

Whose bubble will burst at Richmond? Let's start to answer that by dissecting Pocono first.

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Realistically, any driver within 200 points of the Chase cutoff with six races left is still in the hunt. Rookie contender Juan Montoya is exactly 200 points behind Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the 12th and final Chase spot -- with a road course coming up the week following.

On the flip side, the Bubble Watch begins with the ninth-place driver, which happens to be defending series champion Jimmie Johnson. After winning four of the first 10 races of the season, it looked as if Johnson was going to run away and hide.

Since then, the trend has been somewhat lower. In the 10 races since he earned his fourth victory of the season, Johnson has just two top-five and four top-10 finishes, and he's finished 37th or worse three times. He was 37th at Chicagoland and 39th at Indy the last two weeks, so he's limping into Pocono.

He's 252 points ahead of Dale Earnhardt Jr. in 12th, but just 265 points from being out of the Chase altogether. That's not likely to happen, but the fact that there's even a question at this point is amazing in itself.

Johnson has won twice at Pocono, the last coming in 2004, and his average finish there is a tad over 11.1, so it's a good track for him.

Clint Bowyer is 10th in the points, 64 behind Johnson and up 201 on Earnhardt Jr. Like Johnson, he's on the bubble, but far enough away from the edge to escape full-blown panic.

Bowyer is trending well coming into Pocono, having finished seventh, 10th and 13th in the last three races, and his lone top-10 finish in three Pocono races came earlier this summer.

In 11th place sits Martin Truex Jr., and he's 131 points ahead of teammate Earnhardt Jr. It's getting tight down there at the bottom of the Chase, and Truex has had a decent last three races, finishing 13th, 39th and 12th.

Trouble is, Kurt Busch has finished third, sixth and 11th during that same span, and he's just 13 points out of the Chase right now.

Earnhardt Jr. has been up and down so much this season, it is very difficult to judge how his Chase chances stack up for Pocono. He's trending terrible right now, with 36th- and 34th-place finishes bracketing a 19th in the last three races, and Busch is coming like a freight train.

Junior is pretty decent at Pocono, averaging around 18th in terms of finishing position. However, he's had an engine go sour and a crash or two of late, so the Bud team needs to find some mojo on the go-go or it's going to be no-no for the Chase.

Busch, whose brother Kyle is eighth, is making a case for the Chase with his performances of late, and he's stout at Pocono. Needing just a 13-point swing to get into the Chase, Busch has a Pocono victory in 2005 and six top-five finishes in 13 starts. Earnhardt, by contrast, has three top-fives in 15 starts and no victories.

Behind Busch comes his teammate, Ryan Newman, who has quietly been regaining the form that led him to eight victories in 2003. Newman is just 59 points out of the Chase himself, and he too has a victory at Pocono to his name. Newman's 11 starts have resulted in five top-five finishes, and he was at Jeff Gordon's A pillar when the yellow waved for rain in June, so he's recaptured some of the "Rocketman" magic.

Newman is trending generally upward, despite a 42nd-place result at Indy last week. The two races before that, he was eighth and 14th.

Jamie McMurray has had a couple of bad races following his Daytona victory, but he's still just 113 points out with six races remaining. Pocono hasn't been all that special for McMurray, as in nine starts he's had but two top-10 finishes. But he and crew chief Larry Carter broke through at Daytona, so there's a chance they could put something together at Pocono, too.

Greg Biffle is coming back around after a 2006 season spent wandering around the middle of the pack. His last three races, he's been sixth, 11th and 15th, and he's come from 20th after Michigan to 16th in the points after Indy.

Biffle is just 15 points behind McMurray for 15th, and that leaves him 128 shy of the Chase with six to go. Despite some powerful racecars at Pocono, Biffle's best finish there in nine starts is fourth.

In 17th place, there's the semi-retired Mark Martin, who is just 172 points out of the Chase despite having missed five races. He's running well, finishing 17th, 14th and sixth in his last three, and if his schedule permits and some of the others have trouble, he could be a contender in the final weeks.

Despite never having won at Pocono, Martin has six runner-up finishes on the tricky triangle, and in 41 career starts, he's managed a top-10 on 28 occasions. He has 19 top-fives, too, as well as three poles. This isn't over yet, despite what Martin might say.

Finally, Montoya occupies 18th in the driver standings, exactly 200 points behind Earnhardt Jr.

His last three races resulted in a rookie-like 35th, a solid 15th and a fast-closing second at Indy, and he's one of those guys who can hit a hot streak and make some noise. Of course, he's had some growing pains, including an eight-race stretch where his best finish was 23rd and his worst was 43rd, so he's a dark horse at best.

Montoya did finish 20th in his first race at Pocono, which is fairly impressive given he'd never seen the place before that weekend.

That does it for Bubble Watch this week. Who knows how it will look seven days from now.