Nothing (at least compared to other sports).

Yes, for the third year in a row and the fourt time in five years, the points leader at the start of the Chase will not win the Chase after Kyle Busch's flameout. While some will complain the system is unfair to NASCAR's "regular season champ'' consider that the same thing happens in other sports.

In Major League Baseball, the Florida Marlins have won two World Series titles although they have never won a division title. In fact, only once since 2000 has the team with the best record in baseball gone on to win the World Series. That was Boston last year. St. Louis won the 2006 title although it had the worst record among all the playoff teams. Florida's record ranked seventh of eight playoff teams in 2003. The New York Yankees won the 2000 crown despite having the worst record of the playoff teams.

You see the same thing in the NFL. Only once since the 2000 season has the best team won the Super Bowl and that was New England in the 2003 season (2004 Super Bowl). Five of the 12 playoff teams last year had a better record than the New York Gaints, last year's Super Bowl winners.

Is the Chase a gimmick? Of course it is. Just like the wildcard is a gimmick in baseball, the NFL and such. This is all about business. The more teams you can have competing for a title, the more fan interest you should have, which equals more money. Why do you think more than half the NHL teams make the playoffs?

In essence this is what makes the playoffs great and bad at the same time. You can have a team dominate (as Kyle Busch) has and falter during the playoffs (or Chase) and it pretty much ruins what had been a fantastic season. Then, there are the underdog stories such as the Marlins or in NASCAR it would be Kurt Busch, who entered the inaugural Chase in 2004 in seventh place and won the whole darn thing, beating Jimmie Johnson by eight points and Jeff Gordon by 16 points.

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In case you missed it, Cup tested at Charlotte on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Here are the top speeds from Wednesday's sessions:

1. Jeff Gordon ... 187.233 mph

2. Scott Speed ... 186.638

3. Denny Hamlin ... 186.599

4. Juan Pablo Montoya ... 185.957

5. Elliott Sadler ... 185.790

6. Carl Edwards ... 185.650

7. Sam Hornish Jr. ... 185.478

8. Mike Skinner ... 185.433

9. Jeremy Mayfield ... 185.420

10. Michael McDowell ... 185.198

Skinner was in the 84 of Allmendinger; Mayfield was in the 41 of Sorenson. Greg Biffle was the fastest on Tuesday and was fast in Wednesday's afternoon session.

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A FEW OTHER TIDBITS

# Kyle Busch is the only driver among the Chase competitors not to have a top-10 finish in the first two races.

# The 11 different winners at this point in the season is the fewest in the last few seasons. There were 15 different winners at this point last year, 12 at this point in 2006, 13 at this point in 2005 and 12 at this point in 2004.

# The race winner has started in the top 10 a total of 21 times this season. Last year that number was 12 at this point.

# Six Cup races have ended under green-white-checkered flags: Bristol I, Texas I, Richmond I, Michigan I, Infineon and Daytona II. Only once did the leader before the green-white-checkered finish lose the race. That was Bristol I when Denny Hamlin's car sputtered on the restart and Jeff Burton passed him and led the final two laps to win.

# According to NASCAR, there have  been 439 penalties issued this season. 223 have come for pitting too soon; 34 for too fast entering pit road, 63 for too fast exiting and 119 listed as others.

# Kyle Busch on how testing was going Wednesday at Charlotte: "Just another test, not a whole lot different than what we've tried and done and proved doesn't work here in the past.''

# Jeff Gordon has high hopes for Kansas this weekend after a test last week at Kentucky: "We had a great test at Kentucky last week. I feel like a lot of the things that we learned there we can apply to Kansas. I think if any track is similar to Kentucky, it is Kansas. So we're looking forward to seeing if those things can apply and if we can get ourselves going down the right path.''

# Kasey Kahne, who is not in the Chase, about how his team has developed this season and compares to last year: "Well, I think we're definitely better as far as speed. Just when we show up at the racetrack and we start practice in practice start the race we're faster than what we were last year. So the cars are better, the chassis that they're building, you know, the engines. Everybody's working really hard to make that stuff better. I know the R6, the new Dodge engine has taken a little bit of time. We don't have it yet, but we're working hard to do the best what we can with what we have. Our cars are actually really nice. I think they're some of the nicest cars in the garages as we keep updating them and making them better and newer. But, you know, we just need to keep working on the set-ups. Keep working on the package that's underneath the car. Just to keep the car on the racetrack. We still have a ways to go there.''

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