Will Five-Time Wear “Penultimate Warrior” Crown?

Who will blink first?

The lead in this season’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup™ has changed for the third time. Now it’s Jimmie Johnson’s turn again to head the standings, by seven points over Matt Kenseth.

It’s hardly breathing room going into the penultimate race of the season, despite the fact that Johnson closed the deal in four consecutive seasons – 2006-09 – when he held the lead with two races remaining and went on to claim championships.

Phoenix International Raceway, which hosts Sunday’s AdvoCare 500 (3 p.m. ET ESPN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) proved to be Johnson’s undoing a year ago.

Holding an identical seven-point advantage, Johnson’s No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet suffered suspension damage late in the race en route to a 32nd-place finish.

The accident opened the door for Brad Keselowski to win the 2012 championship.

The leader entering the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup’s™ penultimate race won the title in six straight seasons. Not so in the last three in which Denny Hamlin, Carl Edwards and Johnson took leads to Phoenix and lost – a fact that can give Johnson pause and Kenseth hope.

The edge at the one-mile track in the Valley of the Sun decidedly falls to Johnson, a four-time winner who recorded Phoenix Chase race victories in 2007-09.

Johnson finished among the top five in 12 of his last 14 Phoenix starts, including a second place in March. He’s led 932 laps double that of Kenseth (212) and third-place Kevin Harvick (420) combined. His average finish is 6.5 in 20 starts, nearly 11 positions better than Kenseth.

Johnson tops six Loop Data statistics including Driver Rating (116.4), Fastest Laps Run (538) and Average Green Flag Speed (125.519).

Johnson is optimistic but hardly ready to celebrate.

“I feel good. But, man, it’s so weird because I’ve been in position before where I’ve had these amazing sensations and feelings that a championship was going to happen, and we were able to do it for those five years in a row,” he said following Sunday’s victory at Texas Motor Speedway. “There were other years where I had those feelings, and it didn’t happen.

“I guess the lesson in all of that is I’m not counting on anything and I have to go to Phoenix and race.”

Statistically speaking, Jimmie Johnson vs. Matt Kenseth at Phoenix International Raceway appears anything but a fair fight.

Johnson far and away owns the best resume in victories, top fives and 10s, laps led and – most important – average finish, 6.4 to Kenseth’s 17.2. Kenseth’s only victory – three fewer than Johnson – came over a decade ago, in 2002. He hasn’t posted a top five at the one-mile track since 2007.

The record book, however, is just that. The past won’t necessarily be repeated in the present – as Johnson found out two weeks ago at Martinsville Speedway, where Kenseth out-raced and out-pointed the five-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion, who enjoyed an even greater statistical edge.

Riding a streak of four Phoenix finishes outside the top 10, Kenseth qualified ninth and finished seventh in March in his second race with the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota team.

“We had a really great car there in the spring,” said the 2003 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion. “We were really good at Loudon (his second Chase victory) and were really good at Martinsville so I’m looking forward to getting there.

“I hope we can go there and run up front and have a car to win.”

Kenseth may be disappointed that he enters the season’s penultimate event facing a deficit of seven points. But because it’s effectively a two-driver and two-team race, he still can control the outcome.

“I wish I was seven points ahead but at the end of the day it’s in our hands,” said Kenseth. “If you win the last two races … the math works out to where you can still win (the championship).

“The strategy is really easy. As the 48 (Johnson) has proven time and time again, if you’re going to win a championship and win races, you have to go through him. We’ve had the same strategy since the first race of the Chase to the last one. You go try to qualify the best you can, lead as many laps as you can and try to win the race. We’re right in it.”

Kevin Harvick’s performance in this year’s Chase defines the word “solid.”

The driver of the No. 29 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet won at Kansas, finished six times among the top 10 and has completed all 2,595 laps of the eight races for an average finish of 7.4.

Solid – at least this year – doesn’t equal success. Entering Sunday’s AdvoCare 500 at Phoenix International Raceway, Harvick finds himself on the cusp of championship elimination. The Bakersfield, Calif., veteran, third in the standings, is 40 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson.

Harvick doesn’t control his own destiny. All he can do is win out – then hope Johnson and current runner-up Matt Kenseth suffer stumbles of historic proportions.

Winning on Sunday might be the easiest part of the equation. Last fall’s Chase race was Harvick’s third victory at the one-mile track. He’s won four NASCAR Camping World Truck Series races as well as a NASCAR Nationwide Series event in the Valley of the Sun.

“We really did well at Phoenix last year and also ran well there earlier this season, but we didn’t play the strategy game correctly at the end and lost the track position we needed,” said Harvick, who finished 13th in March. “The track is still racy enough where you can make up time if your car is good, but you need to stay focused on strategy.”

Harvick has the track’s fifth-best Driver Rating (99.0), fifth-fastest average green flag speed of 125.133 mph and fifth-most laps run in the top 15 (4,035/75.0%).

Sunday’s race will be Harvick’s next-to-final start for Richard Childress Racing before moving to Stewart-Haas Racing in 2014. Harvick has finished among the top five in the championship standings in five of his 12 seasons with bests of third in 2010 and 2011.

Though a championship will likely escape their grasp, a pretty impressive accolade remains within reach for the likes of Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Clint Bowyer and Greg Biffle: A top-five NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship finish.

Currently, Earnhardt resides on that fifth-place bubble, but enjoys only a seven-point cushion over Gordon and Bowyer, and an 11-point lead on Biffle.

This weekend will be integral in deciding that top half of the final top 10.

Earnhardt: Coming off a runner-up finish at Texas, Earnhardt has two wins at Phoenix, the last coming in 2004. He finished fifth earlier this season.

Gordon: A two-time winner at Phoenix, Gordon has been strong there recently with top-10 finishes in two of the last three races.

Bowyer: Bowyer finished sixth earlier this season at Phoenix, but hasn’t led a lap there since 2006.

Biffle: Biffle has finished in the top 10 at Phoenix in two of the last three races. His best Phoenix finishes were a pair of runner-ups in 2005 and 2007.

With two races to go and seven points separating the top two in the championship battle, the title contenders will likely step up in the clutch. So it might be a tad difficult for anyone in the field to play spoiler.

But not impossible.

Reigning champion Brad Keselowski believes he can outrun anyone in the field, any given weekend and has proven he won’t settle for second in Chase races. Keselowski already has one win and four top-10 finishes in this year’s Chase races. He goes into Phoenix with the third-best average finish at the track among active drivers since 2011.

Denny Hamlin has the best average finish at PIR since 2011, and won at the track in 2012. Hamlin comes into Phoenix with three consecutive top-three finishes. Since his rookie year Hamlin has never gone winless in a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season and has stated that he would like to keep that streak alive and build momentum for 2014.

Kasey Kahne has been mathematically eliminated from title contention, making him a potential spoiler to this year’s title contenders in the final two races. Prior to this season, Kahne was the last spoiler to win a Chase race. That win came at Phoenix in 2011 with Team Red Bull. Kahne would like nothing more than to join his Hendrick teammates at the front of the field and pick up his third win of the season.

Jeff Burton will make his 1000th career NASCAR national series start this weekend at Phoenix, becoming the sixth driver to reach that prolific milestone.

Burton, whose first NASCAR national series start came in a NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Martinsville in 1988, will join Richard Petty (1,185), Mark Martin (1,141), Joe Nemechek (1,073), Michael Waltrip (1,062) and Terry Labonte (1,013) as those reaching the 1,000-start plateau.

Burton’s start breakdown per series: 689 in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, 306 in the NASCAR Nationwide Series and four in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.