CONCORD, N.C. -- 2015 Chase for the Sprint Cup. Second verse. Same as the first?
Well, not exactly.
There are 12 drivers instead of 16, so four more will be eliminated after the three-race round that starts Saturday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway and is followed by visits to Kansas Speedway and roll-the-dice Talladega Superspeedway.
This time around, there is no Kevin Harvick predicting he would "pound them into the ground" when talking about the competition from Joe Gibbs Racing.
But Harvick is still around, something that looked doubtful as he faced a must-win situation at Dover International Speedway on Sunday.
He did that, and he tops this look at the second round -- the Contender Round, as NASCAR calls it -- of the 2015 Chase.
Still the favorite
Harvick needed his first Cup win ever at Dover to advance, and he did just that. Leading 355 of the 400 laps, the Stewart-Haas Racing driver brought his laps-led total to more than 2,000 for the second consecutive year.
The defending Sprint Cup champion heads to a track that he used to hate but now likes -- he is the only driver with multiple wins (three) in the past 10 races at Charlotte.
"I was at peace with whatever way it went [at Dover]," Harvick said. "I knew that we had done everything that we could do to prepare, and cars were running well. It just wasn't all lining up in the first two weeks. But luckily it all lined up on Week 3 and worked out."
Knocking on the door: the JGR quartet
Joe Gibbs Racing won the first two races of the Chase -- Denny Hamlin at Chicagoland and Matt Kenseth at New Hampshire -- continuing a JGR comeback of sorts that started at Charlotte in May, when Carl Edwards won the Coca-Cola 600. The team has continued to make the most of its opportunities.
Yeah, that win was based on fuel mileage, but so what? Since then, JGR has won 11 of the past 18 races.
Edwards' average finish of 10.8 at Charlotte is the third-best all time among those with at least 10 starts at the track, so he likely can count on running well there.
Still, which history will be on the JGR side?
Kyle Busch has never won a Cup race at Charlotte despite having led 903 laps. And looking toward next week, the JGR drivers have a combined three wins in their history at Kansas.
Busch also would like to overcome this sad fact: He has never won a Cup race in October.
"It just seems like September, October, November is typically not my part of the season to have good luck," Busch said. "Maybe the luck that we did have over the summer months is maybe paying off now."
Last year, the Gibbs drivers didn't have the luck at Charlotte. Harvick won the race. And Kenseth and Hamlin were hopping mad at Brad Keselowski, whom Kenseth put in a headlock.
Who's getting in a headlock this year?
"Hopefully it's not me," Kenseth said.
Lurking and ready: the Penske duo
Keselowski isn't interested in reliving last year, even though it seems to be on virtually every highlight reel promoting this weekend.
"It doesn't feel like it's worth the time or energy to me," Keselowski said. "It's not just the incidents where I'm involved, I think the incidents that anyone is involved in, I feel like it takes away from a lot of the great storylines the sport has to tell and goes to an audience that can't appreciate some of the great things about our sport."
Few seem to appreciate just what the Penske drivers have done this year. They have combined for four wins -- three by Joey Logano, including the Daytona 500. Logano's 121 points in the Contender Round last year were the most of any driver.
He certainly will be a threat to advance.
"I feel like my team is where we need to be," Logano said. "We're not far off. We're really close. We've been consistent all year. You look at the 4 team [of Harvick]. They've got three wins, and we've got three wins. Look at top-5s, and we're right there with them. We're in the ballpark."
Talladega favorite: Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Earnhardt put it bluntly when he looks at his chances in this round:
"This year, at the three tracks we're going to run next, we finished third, third and first," Earnhardt said. "So we've got a great shot."
Earnhardt has won the past two restrictor-plate races, in April at Talladega and in July at Daytona. They have been his only wins this year.
"Out of the first round and the third round, this second one is probably the most important to get that win early just because of Talladega," Chase driver Martin Truex Jr. said. "It's such an unknown. Unless you've got an 88 on your door, your chances of winning there are pretty slim."
Don't forget about ...
Speaking of Truex, he and Kurt Busch have shown an ability to win races this year, too. Busch won at Richmond and Michigan, while Truex won at Pocono in June. Truex, by the way, led the most laps in the May race at Charlotte.
"It's part of our strategy is to run consistent, run fast and finish the races strong," Busch said. "We've been consistent, we've been running fast. We haven't been finishing the races strong. That's our next objective in these next three.
"If the spotlight is on others, that's great."
The winless
Ryan Newman proved last year that a winless driver can make it to the championship. Three of the five winless drivers were eliminated in the first round, leaving Newman and Jeff Gordon as the only ones without a victory who still have a chance to win the title.
What do they have to say for themselves? Newman was second last year in this round with 117 points. And Gordon has a winning history at Charlotte (dating to his first career Cup win in 1994) as well as having led 134 laps at restrictor-plate races this year.
"All we can do ... is play to our strengths, do what it is that we do well, which is consistency [and] steadily improving," Gordon said.
Is consistency good enough? Could Mr. Consistency have the last word? He will here:
"We haven't been the best race car as far as leading laps and winning races, but we've been consistent -- and we proved last year that there is some math involved that gets rewarded for consistency," Newman said.