Kasey Kahne's tenure with Hendrick Motorsports was, let's say, less than ideal over the first six races.

Although he won a pair of poles, he also had just a pair of lead-lap finishes and also a pair of DNFs. Six races in, no finishes better than 14th and a 31st-place spot in the points.

But something clicked, and since then Kahne hasn't finished worse than eighth, giving him the second-highest points total in that six-race span, behind Kyle Busch.

The highlight, of course, was Sunday's win at Charlotte Motor Speedway, as Kahne became the 16th different driver to win for Hendrick Motorsports and just the second driver in NASCAR Cup Series history to win in his 300th career start, joining Rusty Wallace, who got a well-deserved call to the Hall of Fame last week.

Charlotte seemed like a very likely place for Kahne to get back to Victory Lane, as four of his 13 career wins have come there.

Kahne has won everywhere he's gone, as this is the fourth team with which he's won a Cup race. Which brings me to ...

Trivia break! Who is the only other active full-time Cup driver who has won with at least four different teams?

Coming up short

On Monday's "NASCAR Now," Ricky Craven made the point that it seems like every year in the Coca-Cola 600 there's a driver who's the class of the field early but can't adjust to the cooler track conditions at night.

This year, that driver was Greg Biffle, who led more than half the laps, 204, but finished fourth.

That's the fifth-most laps a driver has led in the 600 without a victory, and the second most in the past 40 years, behind only Jimmie Johnson's 263 in 2002.

But Biffle kept up the consistency that's put him atop the points. He has a 7.2 average finish this season. If he keeps that up for the year, it will be the best mark since Dale Jarrett had a 6.8 mark in his 1999 championship season.

Trivia break! Who holds the modern-era (since '72) record for the best average finish in a season among full-time drivers?

Where's the drama?

The continuing theme of the season is the fans' complaints that the racing has been somewhat dull. Whether or not you enjoy the long green-flag stretches, the stats say that late-race drama is down from last year, even though last year is tough to top.

Take these facts into consideration:

• There have been three races this season with margins of victory of more than three seconds. There were two such races all of last season.

• There's only been one race with a lead change in the final 10 laps this season. Fifteen of 36 races last season had a lead change in the final 10 laps.

• Four of the 12 race winners this season led at least the final 40 laps. Only four of the 36 winners last season led at least the final 40 laps.

Trivia break! We haven't had a last-lap pass yet this season. But which driver has won three of the past six races featuring a last-lap pass?

Trivia break answers

1. Joe Nemechek also has won races with four different teams (all four of his wins).

2. Cale Yarborough had a 4.5 mark in 1977.

3. Kevin Harvick has won three of the past six decided by a last-lap pass.

I'll be the first to admit that numbers can be misleading.

Of course, except mine. My statistics have only good intentions, looking to guide you and me together on a path of enlightenment.

But other numbers can be misleading, especially when it comes to drivers at Charlotte. So let's break down three drivers, one who is worse than you thought, one who's better and a third who's a bit of both.

Jimmie Johnson: Charlotte is sometimes referred to as "Johnsonville." There was a period of time when the dude owned the place, at one point winning four in a row. But that time has passed.

Johnson's driver rating has slipped at Charlotte over each of the past six seasons (see accompanying chart), except a rebound in 2009.

Johnson looked like he was making a comeback at Charlotte in 2009, when he ran a race-high 71 fastest laps in a win. After that, though, the drop continued.

Over the past four Charlotte races, Johnson has run 88 fastest laps, a still-respectable number at sixth-best in the series but certainly not worthy of track ownership.

Kyle Busch: Busch's career at Charlotte was rocky at the start of his Cup career. In his first seven races there, he finished 25th or worse six times. But in his past nine starts, he's finished eighth or better in all but one.

Despite not having won there, his numbers are among the best. In the past 10 races at Charlotte, Busch has put up two of the three highest single-race driver ratings, but finished second and sixth in those races.

Tony Stewart: Early in Stewart's career, he was a regular front-runner at Charlotte, with six top-5s and nine top-10s in his first dozen races there. In his past 14? Not a single top-5.

But there's hope, Smoke fans. Last fall at Charlotte, Stewart put up a 121.2 driver rating, his best in his past 14 races there.

Looking for trouble

Every week, my fellow members in ESPN Stats & Information crunch the numbers and tell us what to watch for this weekend.

Since 1990, more drivers have recovered from accidents and gone on to post top-10 finishes at Charlotte than any other intermediate track.

Carl Edwards (three times), Jeff Gordon (twice) and Martin Truex Jr. (twice) are among those with multiple "saves" at the track. Edwards has more such recoveries at Charlotte than all other tracks combined (two).

The Eliminator: Charlotte

For those of you new to my little blog, every week I use a device called The Eliminator to make a pick.

It's pretty simple: Instead of telling you somebody will win, I'll point out why everybody else has to lose. The driver remaining, by process of elimination, is the race winner.

And if you want to see who was eliminated in each step, I'll post the info Friday on my Twitter account (@MattWillisESPN).

1. The past 14 Sprint Cup Series winners finished 16th or better in the last race at the track. (31 drivers eliminated, 16 remaining).

2. Nine of the past 10 Charlotte winners were 11th or better in the last Kansas race (eight eliminated, eight remaining).

3. Eight of the past nine Charlotte winners had a previous top-two finish at the track (three eliminated, five remaining).

4. There have been 10 different winners in the past 10 Charlotte races (three eliminated, two remaining).

5. The past three Charlotte winners finished 17th or better in each of the past three races (one eliminated, one remaining).

Your winner: Kyle Busch

One of the interesting aspects of NASCAR is that it is both a team and individual sport.

There's only one driver in the car but countless people put in the work at the body shop, engine shop, on pit road and atop the pit box. Not to mention people who sell the sponsorship to get the money to get the equipment to get speed and results.

So that's why we celebrate Hendrick Motorsports' 200th win. Because it's not only a win for Jimmie Johnson and Rick Hendrick, it's a win from A to Z in that organization, something special that countless people have been involved in for nearly 30 years.

If you didn't know (then you better recognize), Johnson's Southern 500 win on Saturday was the 200th for the organization, meaning it joins the now-defunct Petty Enterprises (separate from the current Richard Petty Motorsports) as teams to reach the 200-win plateau.

To put it in perspective, only three other teams have even reached 100 wins: Junior Johnson's team (132 wins), Roush Fenway Racing (127) and Richard Childress Racing (100).

Fifteen different drivers have won Cup races for Hendrick, from Jeff Gordon and Johnson, who have combined for more than 70 percent of those wins, to drivers such as Casey Mears and Jerry Nadeau, who each won one apiece.

Among the other four teams with 100 wins, only Johnson's teams had more than 10 drivers win. Petty and Roush each had eight, and Childress seven.

Trivia break: After Gordon and Johnson, which driver had the most wins for Hendrick?

Feels Like The First Time

NASCAR Sultan of Stats Mike Forde sent out an incredible stat sheet of everything you wanted or wished to know about Hendrick Motorsports' 200 victories.

In there is a breakdown of every driver who got his first win for Hendrick Motorsports, eight drivers total.

But I dug a little deeper, embraced my inner dork and referred to a spreadsheet to find out that it's the most first-time winners in Cup history by any team.

Take the other two active teams with more than 100 wins. Seven of the eight drivers to win for Roush Fenway had never won before, while five of the seven winners for Richard Childress Racing picked up their first win for RCR.

Trivia break: Who is the only driver to win for Roush Fenway Racing who had previously won for another team?

But Something On Johnson

Johnson's win moved him past Rusty Wallace into sole possession of eighth all time with 56 Cup wins.

This, of course, begs the question of how high Johnson can get on the all-time wins list.

It's fun to speculate but tough to figure out which numbers to speculate with.

For his career, Johnson's win percentage is around 15 percent, which equates to 5.4 wins per 36-race season. But he's won only three of 47 starts over the past two seasons, a 6.4 percentage and 2.3 wins per season.

From there, I'll let you draw your own conclusion, but let's pick a point in the middle which accounts for declining numbers as his career goes on, let's say 3.5 wins per season for the rest of his career.

Once again, highly speculative, but let's say he drives until he's 45, since not everyone is Mark Martin. So he'll retire after the 2020 season.

My speculation puts him between 86 and 87 wins -- enough to move past Jeff Gordon's current mark ahead of all but Richard Petty and David Pearson.

Trivia break: Who is next on Johnson's checklist, the driver seventh all time in Cup wins?

Trivia Break Answers

1. Terry Labonte won 12 races, the only other driver in double digits.
2. Jamie McMurray won for Chip Ganassi before going to Roush Fenway.
3. Dale Earnhardt is seventh with 76 wins, still 20 ahead of Johnson.

When a usually dominant superpower slows down from its normal winning ways, we as sports fans want to know, "What's wrong with X?"

Whether it's the Yankees, Patriots, Lakers or Hendrick Motorsports, domination is the norm, and anything less leaves us begging for an explanation.

Sometimes, it's not so easy to answer the question. In the case of Hendrick, the team has had strong runs, races it should've won and cases of bad luck.

Still, through it all, Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been the most consistent driver in the series this year and is third in the standings. Jimmie Johnson is solidly within the top 10 in eighth place. Jeff Gordon and Kasey Kahne have had glimpses of strength negated by bad breaks.

But NASCAR is built on wins, and Hendrick hasn't done that since last October, the team's longest streak since a 17-race winless run over the 2001-02 seasons. The last time Hendrick went this long into the season without a win was 1993, aka Jeff Gordon's rookie season.

But Darlington could turn that around.

Dating back to 2005, when NASCAR began tracking loop data, all four current Hendrick Motorsports drivers rank among the top eight in driver rating at the Lady in Black, including Gordon, who's way out in front. No other team has more than one driver represented in the top eight.

However, which Jeff Gordon will show up? In 2010, Gordon had a career-best 134 driver rating, with his 69 fastest laps run in the race being twice as many as any other driver.

Last year, Gordon slipped to a still-respectable 107.3, the sixth-highest in the field.

Kasey Kahne is just as badly in need of a win as Gordon is, and last year, Kahne had the race's dominant car, all while driving for now-defunct Red Bull Racing. Kahne started from the pole and finished fourth, snapping a five-race Darlington stretch of finishes of 20th or worse.

But expect Kahne to start near the front. In nine career Darlington starts, he's won four poles.

Looking For Trouble

Every week, our friends over at ESPN Stats & Information crunch the numbers and tell us where the trouble zones might be this weekend.

After nearly 1,600 miles of Sprint Cup Series racing without an accident, we saw four, including a pair of nine-car pileups, at Talladega.

At Darlington, the sun might be the biggest obstacle. The sun is scheduled to set at Darlington around 8:13 p.m., during the first quarter of the race.

Since 2005, we've had at least one accident in the first quarter of the race in every Darlington night race, with 14 accidents total. Over the final 75 percent of the race, there have been a total of 20 accidents, with no more than eight in any other quarter.

The Eliminator: Darlington

For those of you who are new to my little blog, every week I use a device called The Eliminator to make a pick.

It's pretty simple, instead of telling you somebody will win, I'll point out why everybody else has to lose. The driver remaining, by process of elimination, is the race winner.

And last year, I had Carl Edwards at Darlington, who finished second behind upset winner Regan Smith.

1. The last 13 Sprint Cup Series winners finished 16th or better in the last race at the track (30 drivers eliminated, 16 remaining).

2. The last 17 Darlington winners finished 17th or better in the previous week's race (nine eliminated, seven remaining).

3. Seven of the last nine Darlington winners had a top-10 finish in the last Texas race (four eliminated, three remaining).

4. Two of the last three Southern 500s have been won by drivers entering 15th or lower in points (two eliminated, one remaining).

Your winner: Kasey Kahne

When Brad Keselowski got his first career Sprint Cup win at Talladega Superspeedway three years ago, I think people chalked it up to an upset Talladega win.

It was for a team that had never won a Cup race, in Keselowski's fifth career start, and he had never led a lap until the final one. But it's clear today that Keselowski is the real deal.

His driving ability was best showcased at the end of the race, as he basically outsmarted the draft. Once he and Kyle Busch had separated themselves from the field, he managed to break the draft and erase the disadvantage the driver leading usually is in at the plate tracks.

That move propelled Keselowski to a win by 0.304 seconds. Now, three-tenths doesn't seem like much, but in plate racing at Talladega, it's practically a blowout.

Since the series introduced electronic scoring in 1993, that's the second-biggest margin of victory on record. The only greater one was a 0.388-second "blowout" by Dale Earnhardt Jr. over Tony Stewart in 2001.

In fact, since 1993, there have been only four plate races decided by over three-tenths of a second. Those two at Talladega, a six-tenths victory by Sterling Marlin over Dale Earnhardt in the 1995 Daytona 500 and ...

Trivia break! What driver won the July 2003 race at Daytona by over four seconds (it was a fuel-mileage race)?

Leader of the pack

Matt Kenseth had just about as dominating an effort as we've seen recently in a restrictor-plate race, leading 73 laps but finishing third. That's the most laps any driver has led at a plate race since Stewart led 86 in a July 2009 Daytona win.

No driver has led more in a Talladega race since Jeff Gordon led 139 there in the spring 2005 race, a race Gordon won.

That brings Kenseth's total in plate race laps led this year to 123, in just two races. Last year, in four plate races, Clint Bowyer led all drivers in laps led with 97.

No driver has led more laps in plate races in a season since Kyle Busch led 135 in 2009.

Trivia break! In the restrictor-plate era (since 1988), who holds the record for most laps led in plate races in a season?

Some fancy passing

NASCAR has been under fire from the fan base for the on-track product -- no denying it. I'll let you decide what you liked and didn't like about the first two plate races of the year. But I'll provide info for your argument.

Sunday at Talladega, there was 103 green-flag passes for the lead (not just at the start-finish line, but anywhere on the track). That's far up from Daytona's 44.

In last year's Talladega races, there were 159 in the spring, but 107 in the fall, so that number didn't drop off much.

There also were 11,459 green-flag passes Sunday for the entire race, about 4,000 more than there were in February at Daytona.

That number is actually up from last spring's wild Talladega race, which featured 11,025 green-flag passes.

Trivia break! Ten drivers have gotten their first Sprint Cup Series win at Talladega, but who is the only one with more career wins than Keselowski?

Trivia break answers

1. Greg Biffle won the race by 4.102 seconds for his first career Sprint Cup Series win.

2. Dale Earnhardt led 523 laps in 1990, winning three of the four plate races.

3. Davey Allison won 19 career Cup races.

Here we are at the quarter-pole mark of the season, and this space is usually reserved for me telling you what I think you should watch for in Sunday's race.

But the truth is, it's my blog, my rules, and I feel like looking back over the first nine races of the season and pointing out some things I've noticed that are worth learning.

How about Jimmie Johnson? Despite being winless this year, Johnson leads the series in pass differential with a plus-94 mark. He has led more laps than any other driver and has been the fastest on the track far more often than any other driver.

Johnson has paced the field on 334 laps this season; the next-highest mark is Matt Kenseth's 166. Plus, Johnson is the fastest car in the second, third and fourth quarters of the race, so his key to victory might be getting off to a faster start.

Now let's go lightning style on three other drivers who have caught my eye:

• Mark Martin -- People are waiting for him to win a race and are wondering if he'd be a Chase contender if he were running full time. I'd say contender, yes, lock, no.

The issue? Falling off late in races. Martin is about 0.75 mph faster than the average green-flag speed in the first quarter of races he runs this season, but that mark drops every quarter of the race.

• Kevin Harvick -- While Hendrick Motorsports has garnered attention this year for not winning, Richard Childress Racing is also winless this season. Harvick is the most notable of those drivers to be winless.

His problem, like Martin's, has been adjusting as the race goes. No car is faster than Harvick on average in the first quarter of the race, 1.3 mph quicker than the average speed. But his speed drops even lower than Martin's, down to just 0.35 mph faster than the average car in the final quarter, which puts him about 14th in the series.

• Carl Edwards -- Edwards has been a disappointment early on in the season, but the truth is that his points position has been better than his performance. He's 14th in the series in average position and driver rating this year but ninth in series points.

The key to his success are late-race runs. He leads the series in pass differential in the final 10 percent of races with a plus-31. Second place is just at plus-19.

Looking for Trouble

The past few races have been noteworthy for their lack of accidents and overall cautions. But this week we go to Talladega, where it doesn't take much to trigger a 15-car pileup. This is what the bright minds over at ESPN Stats & Information have to say:

Since 1990, when we began compiling complete data, this is by far the longest the Sprint Cup Series has gone without an accident -- not counting a spin or brush with the wall that brings out a debris caution.

But at Talladega, it's not over 'til it's over.

Since 1990, we've had six last-lap wrecks at Talladega, twice as many as any other track in that time.

The Eliminator: Talladega

For those of you new to my little blog, every week I use a device called The Eliminator to make a pick.

It's pretty simple: Instead of telling you somebody will win, I'll point out why everybody else has to lose. The driver remaining, by process of elimination, is the projected race winner.

And even though it's Talladega, I'll still try my best here.

1. The past 12 Sprint Cup Series winners finished 16th or better in the previous race at the track (29 eliminated, 15 remaining).

2. Eleven of the past 12 spring Talladega winners finished in the top 12 in the most recent Sprint Cup Series race (nine eliminated, six remaining).

3. The past six spring Talladega winners finished 15th or worse in the previous year's spring Talladega race (two eliminated, four remaining).

4. Six of the past seven Talladega winners were winless on the season entering the race (three eliminated, one remaining).

Your winner: Kasey Kahne

Who doesn't love a Saturday night race with a little controversy? Likewise, who doesn't love a blog with a little controversy?

Next step: Find a controversy. Maybe Formula One blogger Tom McKean and I are high-level art thieves. Or Marty Smith and I start running moonshine ... again.

Mystery cautions and close-call restart penalties aside, your winner Saturday night was one Kyle Busch, which is getting to be a familiar sight at Richmond International Raceway. It's the fourth straight year he has won the spring race at the track.

More impressively, it lowered his average finish at the track to a 4.7. That's the best mark by any active driver at any track, with a minimum of five starts (remember, we've run only a single race at Kentucky).

But let's go historic with this nugget, shall we? Busch's 4.7 average finish is just decimal points behind the best mark for any driver with at least 15 starts at a track. The best mark is Cale Yarborough at Nashville, with a 4.67 mark.

Trivia break! If we lower the minimum to 10 starts, which driver has the best career average finish at a track? Hint: It's a 1.8 at Bowman-Gray.

Can I have a second?

I'm not sure if people are aware, but there's a pretty popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and he's on a bit of a winless streak. The upside? He's getting pretty consistently close to a win, and if he wins, it'll make some history.

Earnhardt has finished second on seven occasions since his last win. The Cup series record for the most runner-up finishes between wins is eight, done four times: Jeff Gordon (snapped in 2011), Jeremy Mayfield (2004), Bobby Allison (1970) and Bobby Isaac (1970).

In total, nine drivers have had at least seven runner-up finishes between wins. Besides Gordon, the other active driver to do so was Kevin Harvick.

Junior's winless streak is now up to 138 races. Only six drivers in Cup history have gone that long between wins. The record belongs to Bill Elliott, with a 226-race stretch.

Trivia break! It could be worse for Junior. What driver holds the record for most second-place finishes without a win?

Dominant in defeat

Carl Edwards, Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart had big performances, but no wins Saturday to show for their efforts.

But let's focus on Edwards, who had an impressive 126.4 driver rating in defeat. Driver rating, a stat that incorporates many parts of NASCAR's loop data, maxes out at 150, and anything over 100 is very good.

Over the past two seasons, Edwards has had six races with a driver rating of at least 125, but just one win in those races.

Edwards is one of just two drivers over the past two years with at least three races with a driver rating of at least 125, but no more than one win in those races. The other? Jimmie Johnson.

Trivia break! What driver has the most races with at least a 125 driver rating over the past two seasons?

Trivia break answers

1. Rex White has a 1.8 mark at Bowman-Gray.

2. If you got this one, I'm impressed. G.C. Spencer finished second seven times without a win.

3. Kyle Busch has had 10 such races, and has won five of those.

On Sunday at Kansas Speedway, it was Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. battling for the win -- a race win and a symbolic win.

See, one of the subplots of the season has been the emergence of Michael Waltrip Racing and whether it has surpassed Joe Gibbs Racing as the headline Toyota team in the Sprint Cup Series. Although Truex ranks higher than Hamlin in points, Hamlin has a pair of wins, and he won this head-to-head matchup.

As for the other two cars on each team, the advantage seems to go to Waltrip. The 55 and 15 cars are 11th and 12th in owner points, with JGR's 18 and 20 cars right behind in 13th and 14th.

Kyle Busch has especially been a disappointment, with just one top-5 finish in eight races. Each of the past four seasons, Busch has won at least three races with at least nine top-5 finishes.

The problem? Some might say it's the distraction of his new Nationwide Series team to go with his Trucks team. I don't want to analyze what's going on in Busch's head, but I can analyze his on-the-track performance.

The biggest issue might be that these long green-flag runs NASCAR has had don't work in Busch's favor. Not only is he among the best on restarts in the sport, but he also tends to fall off in long runs.

This season, Busch has the third-fastest average speed early in runs but the 13th-fastest speed late in runs.

What better place to break this slump than Richmond? Dating back to 2005, Busch has had a driver rating over 100 in 12 of the 14 races there, and one of those that he didn't was a 99.2.

This year? Busch has had a driver rating over 100 in just two of eight races.

His teammate Hamlin might also be among the favorites there. Over the past eight races at Richmond, Hamlin has been the fastest car on 305 laps, Busch on 237, both the most in the series. In fact, only two other cars have even 100 fastest laps run, and nobody else is over 200.

Want more evidence that JGR is the team to beat? I got this.

Hamlin already has led 1,188 laps at Richmond, in the top 10 all time there, and his per-race average of 99.0 laps led is the tops of any driver to race at Richmond.

Busch's 5.0 average finish at Richmond is tops among any driver who's made at least 10 starts there. He's at his best in the spring race there, too. Seven races, seven top-5s and a 2.3 average finish. Oh yeah, he's won this race the past three years.

The Eliminator: Richmond

For those of you new to my little blog, every week I use a device called The Eliminator to make a pick.

It's pretty simple: Instead of telling you somebody will win, I'll point out why everybody else has to lose. The driver remaining, by process of elimination, is the projected race winner.

And don't doubt the system: The Eliminator hit Kyle Busch last spring at Richmond.

1. The past 11 Sprint Cup winners finished 16th or better in the previous race at the track (30 eliminated, 16 remaining).

2. The past 17 Richmond winners had a top-3 finish earlier that season (six eliminated, 10 remaining).

3. The past 13 Richmond winners entered the race in the top 10 in points (four eliminated, six remaining).

4. Six of the past seven Richmond winners finished in the top three in the previous year's race (five eliminated, one remaining).

Your winner: Denny Hamlin

Working on ESPN2's "NASCAR Now" has a certain number of perks that come with it. One is the chance to talk NASCAR, and other assorted random topics, with our reporters and analysts. Monday, Ricky Craven was in house and on the show.

The main topic was Denny Hamlin and his comeback season, as well as his place in history so far.

In 2010, he had a series-leading eight wins. Last year, just a single win as he just snuck into the Chase via the brand-spanking-new wild card.

This year, he has not only the two wins, but four top-10 finishes. In 2010 through eight races, he had two wins, but no other top-10s, leaving him 11th in points. That year, he went on a tear through May and June that netted him three additional victories.

Hamlin has 19 Sprint Cup wins, making him one of 40 drivers to reach that mark. That's it.

Those wins have come in 231 starts. If Hamlin wins one of his next two starts, he will have reached 20 wins faster than Cale Yarborough. If he gets there in 12 more starts, he'll be faster than Dale Earnhardt.

Trivia break! Who are the two drivers who reached 20 wins in less than 100 starts? Hint: Hop in the Wayback Machine.

Kansas Know-How

It looked like Martin Truex Jr.'s day. Mired in a 174-race winless streak, he led more than half the race before being passed by Hamlin with 31 to go.

But Truex still had one of the more dominating performances in recent memory.

Truex's average position throughout the race was a 1.685, the second-best in a race over the past two seasons by any driver at any track.

In a strange twist, any driver with an average position of second or better in a race over the past two seasons didn't go on to win that race.

But Truex's driver rating for the race was a 142.6, within sniffing distance of a perfect 150.

Over the past six seasons, only Kyle Busch and Jeff Gordon have had a better driver rating in a race that they didn't go on to win. Busch did it three times, while Gordon did it once.

Trivia break! Who had the best average position in a race over the past two seasons?

Wreckless Racing

We had track records for fewest cautions and caution laps and highest average speed for the second straight race.

Whether you like the long green-flag stretches we saw first at Texas and then Kansas or not, cautions are at a historic low this season.

Through eight races, we've had only 43 cautions, 25 in the first three races. That's the fewest cautions over the first eight races of the season since 1979, when there were just 37.

Trivia break! Let's see how close you get with a guess. What's the mark for the most cautions in the first eight races of the year since 1980?

Trivia Break Answers

1. Herb Thomas got to 20 wins in 98 races; Fred Lorenzen in 99.

2. Kyle Busch had a 1.515 average position last year at California.

3. In 2005, there were 86 cautions in the first eight races, twice as many as this year.

We're here at the finale of my annual NASCAR Bracket of Massive Significance (patent pending), and the final matchup might surprise you: Martin Truex Jr. versus Clint Bowyer.

Truex has been here before, losing in the 2010 final to Mark Martin. Bowyer was eliminated in the first round in each of the previous two years.

My official, rock-solid pick is Bowyer, but it's more a pick against Truex, who has never had a top-10 finish at Kansas Speedway.

Carry on, Jimmie Johnson

First of all, special thanks to Trevor Ebaugh, Eric Soderburg and the rest of the Stats & Information group's NASCAR team, who help me come up with incredible notes like this every week.

Lately, we've seen long green-flag runs dominating races, and if we get them at Kansas it could benefit some more than others:

• Carl Edwards -- Edwards improves markedly as runs continue at Kansas. He's the 15th-fastest driver early in runs (the first 25 percent of laps after pit stops) but third-fastest late in the run (final 25 percent). That's the most spots improved from early to late since 2005, when NASCAR began tracking loop data.

• Greg Biffle -- Biffle's the second-fastest driver late in runs and has a fifth-place average finish at Kansas since 2005. Biffle's also carrying some serious momentum after his win last Saturday at another 1.5-mile track, Texas.

• Jimmie Johnson -- Johnson is just flat-out fast at Kansas -- it doesn't matter if it's long or short runs.

Over the past eight Kansas races, Johnson has been faster than the average field speed in every stage of the race, and the differential only gets better as the race goes on.

Might be time for Hendrick to dust off those 200th win caps.

Looking for Trouble

Every week, our Stats & Info team compiles a breakdown of the wrecks at the next track on the schedule. Here's this week's takeaway:

Recent races have been notable for their lack of cautions, but if some come out at Kansas, keep an eye on Turn 2.

Since the track opened in 2001, 22 of the 51 accidents at the track have occurred on Turn 2, partly because of a 10-degree drop from Turn 2 to the backstretch.

The second-most common wreck site has been Turn 4, with just nine accidents.

The Eliminator: Kansas

For those of you new to my little blog, every week I use a device called The Eliminator to make my pick. It's pretty simple: Instead of telling you somebody will win, I'll point out why everybody else has to lose. The driver remaining, by process of elimination, will be the race winner.

And don't doubt the system -- The Eliminator hit Jimmie Johnson last October at Kansas.

1. There's never been a first-time winner at Kansas (17 eliminated, 29 remaining).

2. Every Kansas winner had a top-20 finish in the previous Texas race (11 eliminated, 18 remaining).

3. Every winner this season had finished 13th or better in the previous race at the track (eight eliminated, 10 remaining).

4. The past eight Kansas winners finished 19th or worse in the most recent Charlotte race (seven eliminated, three remaining).

5. Both of last year's Kansas winners snapped winless streaks of over 20 races (two eliminated, one remaining).

Your winner: Mark Martin