Chase Bubble: Michigan

And then there were three.

After the carnage at Watkins Glen last weekend, there are just three drivers left who have a shot at supplanting one of the 12 drivers currently in the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

At Michigan International Speedway this weekend, any one of those three drivers that has a big problem could find themselves with no shot at the brass ring.

Traditionally, there are a lot of cars running at the finish at MIS -- 41 crossed the line under their own power earlier this year -- and that makes finishing the highest priority.

Ryan Newman and Dale Earnhardt Jr. are within 100 points of the Chase after Watkins Glen. Greg Biffle has one foot in the go-or-go-home area and the other barely inside the line for "still-has-a-shot."

A closer look at the drivers in positions 8-15:

No. 8 Kyle Busch

On the plus side of the Chase, another top-10 finish for Kyle Busch at Watkins Glen pushed him into the safe zone, as he has a 354-point lead on 13th-place Newman with four races to go. Statistically, it's possible that he might drop out of the top 12, but highly unlikely.

No. 9 Clint Bowyer

Ditto for Clint Bowyer, whose magic number seems to be 16 lately. He has finishes of 13th, eighth and 16th in his past three trips, and was 16th at MIS earlier in the year. His average finish there is a shaky 29.333, however, and his best finish came in June.

Bowyer is 234 points clear of Newman with four to go.

No. 10 Kevin Harvick

Harvick, who got the short end of the stick at The Glen by being caught up in the aftermath of some bumper tag between Juan Montoya and Martin Truex Jr., took a pretty big shot in the points by finishing 36th.

He dropped from ninth to 10th, and while he is 222 points up on Newman, he's riding the edge of a dangerously sharp knife. One more whoopsie like The Glen and he's in real trouble. In his last three races Harvick has been getting worse, finishing seventh, 17th and 36th.

Harvick has been decent at Michigan, with an average finish of 16.077. That's better than Newman's 16.667 mark, although Newman has two victories at MIS. Harvick has to be careful, however, and that should mitigate against the urge to make a "hole in Juan" payback move at Michigan, at the expense of his Chase hopes.

No. 11 Martin Truex Jr.

Truex, whose dive to the bottom in Turn 1 ended up turning Montoya into Harvick, emerged with little damage and raced to a sixth-place finish at The Glen. While still an uncomfortably close 154 points from Newman, Truex is coming off a runner-up finish earlier this year at MIS.

Truex has stabilized of late, finishing 12th, 22nd and sixth his last three trips to the line. Of course, the engine woes at DEI are well-known, and Michigan is a place where the revs stay high all day long, so that might play a role in what happens from here on out. Truex's average finish is 16.000 at the 2-mile, D-shaped oval, in three starts.

No. 12 Kurt Busch

Busch expanded a slim seven-point margin on Earnhardt to a whopping 96, and Newman surged ahead of Junior by four points in the race for 13th. Busch drove to 11th at The Glen, playing it safe with an extra stop for fuel late in Sunday's race.

Busch is trending up, wrapping a victory at Pocono around 11th-place runs at Indy and The Glen, and he figures to fare pretty well at MIS, where he won in 2003 and averages 20.308 per finish.

No. 13 Ryan Newman

Newman, despite a trip into the kitty litter at Watkins Glen, rebounded for 13th at the finish. Combined with Earnhardt's engine failure, that was enough to let him slip past into 13th.

Newman's 96-point deficit is not enough to let Busch breathe easy during the next four races. The Rocketman has won twice at MIS, the last coming in 2004, and since the unfortunate 42nd-place result at Indy, he's finished seventh at Pocono and 13th on Sunday.

No. 14 Dale Earnhardt Jr.

That brings us to Earnhardt who, even after all that has transpired in the past several weeks, is still just four points behind Newman and 100 back of Busch. The engine failure at Watkins Glen was his fourth of the season in 22 races: an average of a blown engine every 5.5 starts. It's also more than he has had in the 180 races run during the past five seasons (see Truex item above).

Earnhardt has some good tracks coming up, like Bristol and Richmond, but is that enough to make up 25 points per race on Busch? The other two races before the Chase are Michigan and California. Like Harvick, he has no more mulligans left with four holes to play.

No. 15 Greg Biffle

The last driver in the threesome with a shot at the Chase is Biffle, who is 212 points out with four to go. Biffle has to run the table to have a chance, and he'll need help besides to make up 53 points per race on 12th place.

Biffle is a two-time MIS winner (the last coming in 2005), and his average finish is four spots better than the guys he's racing. Four spots isn't going to get it done. Biffle has to run in the top five and hope for mechanical trouble among the others to get close.

Biffle is neutral in the past three races, finishing 15th, 23rd and 10th, and while Michigan and California are good tracks for him, he's struggled at Bristol and Richmond.

The Bubble has burst

Despite a rousing fourth at The Glen, 16th-place Casey Mears is too little, too late for the Chase. He's 298 back with four to go, too big a margin to overcome.

Jamie McMurray just can't buy a break, and he'll have the last 10 races to think of a way to finish strong for next season. McMurray, too, was caught up in the Harvick-Montoya fur ball, pasting Harvick's stalled car on the way past. His last three finishes: 33rd, 40th and 36th. That adds up to 316 points behind, and that's too many.

Mark Martin didn't race at Watkins Glen and wouldn't figure in the Chase anyway, but he's 346 points back. That's five points better than Montoya, who went from Chase contender to spunky middleweight in an instant at The Glen.

• How the Chase works: What to know about the Chase for the Nextel Cup