Every week during the Chase, we'll give you the lowdown on who's up, who's down, who's charging, and who's sliding. Not that it now seems to matter much any more ...

Where we stand: Sweet mother of mercy. There's points racing, playing it safe to pile up as many points as you can and hope the leaders falter, and then there's points racing, where you just go out there and win every damn race and let the points all pile up nicely. Bow down before the greatness that is Jimmie Johnson! Bow down, I say! Behind him, if you care, are Greg Biffle, Jeff Burton, Carl Edwards, Clint Bowyer, Kevin Harvick, Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Matt Kenseth, Denny Hamlin, and poor ol' Kyle Busch.

Movin' on up: Biffle, Bowyer, Burton and Edwards are all within a hundred points of each other, and are making a hell of a good push ... for second place. Plus, there was a bunch of shuffling in the second half -- everybody from spots 7 to 12 shifted position -- but, you know, that really doesn't much matter anymore. All Johnson has to do is basically show up and not get eaten by jaguars in the four final races, and he's in very good shape.

Bottoming out: Kyle Busch dropped all the way to last place in the Chase. At this rate, David Ragan will catch him by Homestead -- and he's nearly 2,000 points back.

Outlook: As the Red Sox showed last week, it's not over till it's over. But then as the Rays showed last night, sometimes it is indeed over after all. We'll hold off on the Johnson coronation -- we, uh, got into a bit of trouble doing that for Kyle a few weeks back -- but man alive, the dude is riding higher than anybody else in sports right now.