Author: Jeff Gluck

I wasn’t sure many people would have Joey Logano at Texas, but it turns out eight smarty-pants players picked the winner correctly last week. Three of those were first-time winners and are now in the Chase — @goofyfordfan, @nuggie99 and @richman43. But two others — @katiecole125 and @jay_wilkins17 — joined the exclusive three-time winner club (four people are tied for the most wins with three).

For those of us who haven’t won yet, it seems hard to believe that anyone could pick three winners in the first seven races in ANY kind of contest, let alone one where you can only use a driver one time all year. But they did!

Here’s the entire Chase field as it stands now. There are 140 people in the Chase out of 326 total entries.

Now let’s move on to your picks for Darlington. The top vote-getters are seven-time Darlington winner Jeff Gordon and zero-time Darlington winner Martin Truex Jr. with 34 picks each.

The Gordon selection is obvious. But why Truex? I’m not totally sure — he only has one top-five there — but my theory is people remember Furniture Row Racing winning there with Regan Smith, so they figure Truex might be able to do the same.

Here are all the Darlington picks:

Only five people out of 326 had Kurt Busch winning Sunday’s Martinsville race, which is the second-lowest total of the year (only two people picked Carl Edwards to win at Bristol).

Of those five, four players had not previously won a race. So welcome to the Fantasy Chase, @MrsDMVH, @s_a_markle, @ToeNailUrFace and @ZTsmiley. @DallasJuneBug picked up her second win of the year already (she also had Kevin Harvick winning at Phoenix).

The Martinsville winners:

Here’s the updated list of people in the Fantasy Chase. The total is now 137 players out of 326 (remember, those *** represent the number of wins for each person).

Let’s move on to Texas. Unlike a place like Martinsville or Dover or Sonoma, there are no clear favorites at Texas. As a result, the picks are quite fractured.

Greg Biffle is the top selection (43 people), followed by Matt Kenseth (38), Austin Dillon (25) and Carl Edwards (24). The Dillon pick is surprising, but think about it in this sense: People are looking for someone aside from the major drivers who could at intermediate tracks, and Dillon is a decent darkhorse pick.

Only 21 people picked Kyle Busch to win the Fontana race, which was a bit surprising given he won last year there.

Anyway, it turned out to be a good decision. And it was particularly impressive for @Adam_Huth and @dwilwer, who picked up their THIRD WINS OF THE SEASON in just five races! Keep in mind there are probably many people who won’t win one time all year (me, probably).

Here are the people who picked Kyle Busch at Fontana:

As a side note, you might be wondering which unfortunate players spent their one Denny Hamlin pick for the year on a race he turned out not to be part of. Those 14 people were:

Not surprisingly, Adam_Huth and dwilwer are leading the overall standings. What do they know that we don’t? Crazy! Eight more people were added to the Fantasy Chase thanks to their Kyle Busch pick, bringing the total to 133 out of 326 entries.

The current Chase field (stars equal number of wins):

Now let’s turn our attention to Martinsville. It’s no shock the trendy picks focused on three drivers: Jeff Gordon (100 people), Jimmie Johnson (73) and Denny Hamlin (65). That’s 73 percent of all the picks spent on just three guys.

Here are everyone’s Martinsville selections:

There weren’t many takers for Concrete Carl’s win at Bristol Motor Speedway on Sunday night — a season-low two people had Edwards.

Sunday’s winners:

As you can see from the stars next to their names, that was the first win of the season for both. Bristol brings the total number of people in the Fantasy Chase to 125 (out of 326) . Here is everyone who has made it so far, plus the number of wins they have (again, indicated by a star):

Let’s move on to Fontana. Joey Logano is the favorite with 64 people picking him to win (they likely remember how he almost won last year and were looking for a good value track to use the No. 22 car). Jimmie Johnson got 43 votes to become the second-most picked driver this week.

A look at all of your picks:

Only eight people had Brad Keselowski winning at Las Vegas last week, which made putting together the results a whole lot easier this week!

Here are the eight who got it right. You’ll notice three of them picked up their second win of the year already, which means we only added five more winners to the Fantasy Chase:

Now let’s take a look at the 123 people who have made the Fantasy Chase so far:

And now it’s on to Bristol, where Kyle Busch is the heavy favorite (103 people out of 326 total entries picked Kyle to win).