The last 10 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup races of the season work like a playoff called "The Chase".

I wrote a computer program that randomly generates results for each remaining race before the Chase. Then it tallies each driver's position and repeats, millions of times. When the simulation "runs" a race it gives each of the top 43 drivers an equal chance of finishing in any of the 43 spots, like picking numbers from a hat. If you think a driver is better than that you could mentally bump his chances up. To help flush out each drivers highest and lowest possible seeds, I force them to either win or fail to qualify in all their remaining races for 1000 of the simulation runs. Here is an interactive chart that gives you a feel for how playing out the season millions of times sheds light on the possible finishing scenarios.

Chance of making the Chase: this is what we care about.

Change: the change since last week. If it was 60% last week and 62.5% today, the change would be 2.5. The biggest movers are bold.

Chance driver will be at position when the Chase starts: (before the point fairy arrives) The numbers are rounded percentages, so a 0 means a very small number that rounded to 0. You can hover your mouse above a number to see the "full" percentage and what the driver did to get there. If there is a blank space for a position, the driver never finished there after any of the millions of simulated seasons, although it still might be mathematically possible.

Starts Wins Money: these current standings do not include the non point races like the Bud Shootout.

>12th: the number of points above (or below) the 12th seed. The 12th seed is the last that makes the Chase.