Take Kasey Kahne (7-1), 1/6th unit. And if it ain't Milwaukee Matt, maybe it's California Kasey. (Okay, Kahne is from Washington State, but to me, he oozes Cali). Kahne was fastest in the Friday practice session and also won the pole for Sunday. Like Kenseth, he won at both California and Michigan this year, and finished fourth in the two events he didn't win at those venues. He didn't perform well at Chicagoland (22nd), but I saw a statistic on NASCAR.com this week: he's completed the most green-flag passes at Kansas of any other driver. That's good enough for me, and only a completely amazing string of wins is going to get the ninth-place Kahne back in the Chase mix, so he's got incentive to go for the gusto.

Take Dale Earnhardt Jr. (15-1), 1/6th unit. Junior has had a really great season at Michigan, California and Chicagoland, but it hasn't translated to any wins; he hasn't been a great downforce-track driver over his career, but things really do seem to be turning around for him in that respect. The truth of that matter is that I thought hard about putting Jeff Gordon in this slot, but I felt about the same about Junior and Gordon (this year each has roughly a sixth-place finishing average at the three tracks I just mentioned), but I can get Earnhardt at double the odds, so I'm going with him. Junior qualified 12th, right outside Gordon, who qualified 11th. The rub here is that it seems to me Junior, as much as any other driver, is trying to finish fifth in all these races, rather than win them, because he's got a championship on his mind. But I'm still picking him, because when Junior gets a car locked in, he can't help himself, and if that happens on Sunday, he'll go to the front and stay there. These are really nice odds for a guy who I think will at least have a top-five car.