KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Some others may call the area home, but few drivers on the Cup Series tour were happier to see Kansas Speedway than Denny Hamlin. The series points leader is more than ready to race on a big, intermediate track of the kind that was so good to him earlier in the year.

"Any big track is good for us at this point," Hamlin said Friday at the 1.5-mile facility. "We're getting ready to get into a swing of a lot of big mile-and-a-half, two-mile race tracks, and I feel like that was really our bread and butter through the summer months. I feel like we're definitely heading into some tracks that are definitely in our favor I believe."

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We're getting ready to get into a swing of a lot of big mile-and-a-half, two-mile race tracks, and I feel like that was really our bread and butter through the summer months.

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-- DENNY HAMLIN

Indeed, victories on intermediate tri-ovals Texas and Michigan bookended a torrid summer stretch that for two months made the Joe Gibbs Racing driver look like the clear-cut favorite to unseat Jimmie Johnson for the series championship. Now it's time to go back to those facilities, with Kansas opening a string of three straight races on intermediate tri-ovals, and perhaps setting the tone for the remainder of the Chase.

"I think so," said two-time Kansas winner Tony Stewart. "I mean, there are more mile-and-a-half tracks in the Chase than there are anything else. It's definitely a situation where the next couple of weeks kind of give everybody an idea of where they are at and what they have to do."

Four events on intermediate tri-ovals -- Kansas, Auto Club, Charlotte and Texas -- loom in the season's final eight events. Judging by results from earlier in the year, that stretch would seem to favor Kevin Harvick, who's scored more points than any other driver on unrestricted tracks greater than a mile in length. While he only won at one of those, at Michigan in August, he racked up a number of top-10s on those type tracks, including some that the circuit visits again this season.

But not all those tri-ovals have been good to Harvick. One obstacle looming in his path is Charlotte, where he has a career average finish of 20.7 and hasn't posted a top-10 since 2003. His goal is to build up enough points over the next two weeks to withstand anything that might happen there.

"I think this is kind of a lead-in to what the Chase is going to hold as far as the mile-and-a-half race tracks," Harvick said. "The biggest key for us is these two weeks leading into Charlotte, which is what we see as our second Achilles' heel in our whole thing. We just have to go into, not defense mode, but just minimize the damage like we did at Dover. Obviously, I don't feel like we got the maximum potential out of what we had in Dover, but it's important for us to keep that gap as close as possible to first, whoever it may be, and come out of Charlotte. That's really why the next two weeks are important to us as the 29 team goes."

Harvick isn't the only Chase driver with concerns entering this stretch of intermediate tracks. Johnson has gained the second-most points on superspeedways this year, but had episodes at Chicago and Charlotte when he got loose and spun out. The four-time defending champion enjoyed a third-place run at the most recent intermediate track, Atlanta, and he has confidence that his team has the situation figured out.

"The weird thing is that although we had a tough summer on the 1.5-mile tracks, we had a lot of speed, especially the first half of the race," Johnson said. "So, looking at what we've been doing and the balance of the car and the directions we were working on, there was enough that went wrong that we know not to go down that road any longer. So I feel that we've made a good change. Atlanta went well for us, but Atlanta is a pretty unique track with a lot of fall-off on the tire and it's not what we see here or Charlotte and so on. So I'm optimistic, and I feel that we've come to a good conclusion with things. But we've got to get on the track and really prove it and be in the hunt."

But after two weeks of banging it out on mile tracks, Kansas seems a welcome change for Chase drivers who see intermediate layouts as a strength. Jeff Gordon once dreaded venues like these, seeing them as a shortcoming -- as anyone who witnessed his last-gasp run at Texas in 2007, where his No. 24 car didn't have quite enough oomph to stay with Johnson, will attest. Now? Gordon thinks intermediate tracks are among the strengths of his program. Through less-than-stellar runs at New Hampshire and Dover, he carried one thought: let's get to Kansas.

Now he's here, and his weekend started with a third-place qualifying run that was his best since Darlington in May. "This has certainly given some spark back to our confidence," Gordon said.

"We've always heard, at least the last few years, that the guys who are strong on the mile-and-a-halfs are going to be the guys who win the championships. We certainly hope that holds true as well, because that's where we put a lot of our focus, and we're better. You still have to be good on the other tracks, but I think a lot of times those mile-and-a-half [tracks] ... they seem to be more of a determining factor."