How Busch fell so fast and who will replace him as the favorite

After Kyle Busch's downfall, Carl Edwards is the new SI pick to win the Chase. Getty Images

It's almost as if it never happened, that stretch of 26 races during which Kyle Busch so thoroughly dominated the Sprint Cup circuit. But this is the magic of the Chase for the Championship, because only in this 10-race, playoff-style format for the Cup can the title hopes of the driver who's been the man to beat for nearly seven months suddenly go poof! in a matter of two weeks.

After suffering mechanical problems in the first two Chase races of 2008, Busch, who finished 34th at New Hampshire and 43rd at Dover, now finds himself in 12th place and 210 points behind leader Carl Edwards. Just three weeks ago, before the points were recalculated using the Chase math, Busch held a 207-point advantage over Edwards. This begs the question: What, exactly, has happened to Busch and his team since the green flag dropped on the Chase?

For starters, Busch has never flourished in the Chase. In his first Chase, back in 2006, he crashed early in the first race and was never a factor, as he finished dead last among Chasers that year. He did a little better in his next Chase appearance -- he finished fifth in '07 -- but in his four-year Cup career Busch has never been a factor in the postseason. What's the explanation for this? Well, the people I've talked to in the garage believe that Busch's internal RPMs simple rev too high when the stakes are raised, and that this causes him to push his car too hard and ultimately make mistakes on the track.

I was on a radio show the other day on Sirius with Buddy Baker, who had 19 Cup wins between 1959 and '92, and Baker made the salient point that Busch sabotaged any chance he had at a decent finish in New Hampshire by being too aggressive on the track. Yes, Busch had a damaged sway bar at Loudon, but instead of backing off the throttle and going a lap or two down -- at which point he could have pitted under a caution and potentially had his problem fixed on pit road -- Busch lead-footed it around the track.

Predictably, he up ended losing control because of the damaged sway bar and wound up crashing. This, as Baker pointed out on the show, was the mark of a driver who needs more seasoning before he's ever going to seriously challenge for a championship. I agree.

After all, you'd never see Jimmie Johnson make that kind of mistake. When Johnson is driving a car that he believes is no better than 30th place, he'll try to finish 29th, but nothing more than that. But when Busch has a 30th place car, he'll often try to finagle a top-10 finish. This is what makes Busch so exciting on the track, this willingness of his to go for broke, consequences be damned.

But it's certainly not how you win championships in the Chase era. To win the Cup, as Johnson has proven the last two years, you need to win races in the Chase and -- just as important -- you typically need to avoid having more than one 30th or worse finish. This has been the historical pattern in the Chase, which means Busch's title hopes are all but gone. But for hope, Busch can chew on this stat: With five races left in the '06 Chase, Johnson was 146 points out of first place and still won the Cup.

So who's the favorite this year now that Busch, who was SI's pick, has flopped? With eight races to go, it sure looks like the title will boil down to a three-man sprint between Edwards, Johnson, and Biffle. And right now, based on the schedule and the fact that the Roush Fenway Fords have been the class of the field at the 1.5-mile tracks this season, you've got to say that the championship is Edwards' to lose.

Starting on Sunday in Kansas City, the circuit will stop at 1.5-mile tracks in four of its next six stops. Edwards has been the intermediate-track king this year. In 10 starts at 1.5 tracks, he has two wins and five top-five finishes. His stiffest competition should come from Biffle, who's won the last two races and who also thrives at the 1.5-milers, where he has one win and four top-five runs this year.

But what about Johnson, who's trying to become the first driver since Cale Yarborough 30 years ago to win three straight championships? This season Johnson and the entire Hendrick Motorsports organization have trailed Roush Fenway when it comes to performing on the intermediate tracks.

The best way for Johnson to catapult himself into the points lead would be to knock out a top-five run on Sunday, win at the restrictor-plate track at Talladega on Oct. 5, win again at the short track at Martinsville on Oct. 19, then have a strong, top-three showing at Phoenix, a one-mile oval, in the penultimate race of the season on Nov. 9. In other words, Johnson needs to reach Victory Lane at the places where Edwards and Biffle won't dominate, which is exactly what these two have done on the 1.5 milers this season.

So now that SI's projected Chase winner has flamed out, I'm switching gears mid-Chase and picking someone else to capture the Cup. His name: Carl Edwards.