iNSIDE SCOOP: Tide Changing in Title Talk?

After watching Brad Keselowski run through the field at New Hampshire like a harvester through a wheat field, I’d have to say there’s a new title favorite in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

Yep, BK up, JJ trending down with seven races left in the Race to the Chase.

Johnson has always been vulnerable as the season progresses. He didn’t win until May this year, but he won three times since. This team has always been built for the Chase, too, just to make sure that they have something left in the tank in the final 10.

Keselowski has adopted the “I’m fast, I’m going to kick your butt and win as many as I can” approach (also named the Tony Stewart theorem, as Smoke used to say if you win all the races, the points take care of themselves.)

Six-Time lasted until the first Big One at Daytona, then blew two left rear tires in the span of 11 laps, the last one resulting in an early flight back to Concord. That’s a pair of 42nd-place finishes in the last two races.

Sounds ominous, right?

Yeah, if the season ended in a month. But it doesn’t. It ends in flippin’ November. He’s got time, and as I said during his five-year reign, I’ll be the last one to throw dirt on the guy.

But you have to look at the 2012 champion and ask yourself if anything can stop him. Crew chief Paul Wolfe has the mojo nowadays, the stuff that made Chad Knaus the modern-day Merlin when it comes to mechanical magic. 

Keselowski did the same thing at NHMS that he did at the end of June in Kentucky. He unloaded fast, crushed the field and just drove away. That’s twice in three races, and you really can’t count Daytona because NOBODY runs away on a plate track. 

Last two times out, BK has had the goods. Six-Time has had the early plane home.

Of course, it’s a microcosm in the midst of the macrocosm that is the NASCAR schedule, but it could well be the microcosm that spells out the prohibitive favorite for the title.

Right now, it has to be Keselowski. Jeff Gordon is right there, and Kevin Harvick is always to be feared, but Johnson is at best fourth on that list right this minute.

The last time Johnson had this kind of stretch was 2011, and that was the first year since 2006 that he didn’t win the title. I’m not all that sold that the 48 bunch is done, but there are definite chinks in the armor.

With Joe Gibbs’ Toyota teams finally waking up and showing speed, that isn’t good news for the 48; even though he’s solidly in the Chase, Johnson is sputtering right now.

The way he’s running now, he’s third in the four-car Hendrick stable. Of course, that can change in two weeks at Indy, but for the moment, he’s been less-than-stellar the last two races out.

Bk is the leader in the clubhouse right now, and that means bad things for Jimmie Nation.