AVONDALE, Ariz. - The Big Three are in the final four.
Fittingly, the NASCAR Cup Series' three most dominant figures of 2018 are among the four drivers who are eligible for the championship in next Sunday's season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. - each looking for a second title - will have the chance to show who is truly the best, although Joey Logano could play spoiler to the season's script. Logano earned his championship bid by winning at Martinsville Speedway on Oct. 28 in the first race of the next-to-last round of the playoffs.
But it is Busch who heads to Florida fresh off a victory, having won for the eighth time this year by taking the checkered flag Sunday at ISM Raceway near Phoenix as the eight-driver playoff field was sliced in half.
Busch, the 2015 Cup Series champion, shares the season lead for victories with Harvick, who had won the Sunday before at Texas Motor Speedway but had his automatic title bid wiped out last week when NASCAR discovered an illegal spoiler on the 2014 season champion's Stewart-Haas Racing No. 4 Ford.
Truex, who is trying to repeat as series champion, is a four-time winner this season, with his most recent victory at Kentucky Speedway in July. Logano's only other Cup Series win this year was at Talladega Superspeedway in April, and the 28-year-old driver who bore the nickname "Sliced Bread" early in his career is trying to secure his first title. His best season finish was as the series runner-up two years ago, when Jimmie Johnson earned a record-tying seventh championship.
The championship field is two Ford drivers (Harvick and Team Penske's Logano) two Toyota drivers (Joe Gibbs Racing's Busch and Furniture Row Racing's Truex), with Chevrolet shut out of the finale in what has been mostly a tough year for the manufacturer.
Now it all comes down to one race on a 1.5-mile oval, a 400-mile dash to be the best.
"I don't know how you could pick a favorite, necessarily," Busch said. "I would predict this is the best four, the closest four that have been in our sport in a long time.
Busch and Harvick have battled at the top all year, and Busch could have controlled Harvick's fate late in Sunday's race when he was lined up against Harvick teammate Aric Almirola on a restart. An Almirola victory would have eliminated Harvick from the playoffs, which Busch acknowledged considering.
"I did think about it," Busch said. "But I'm here to win the race. They always want it to play out naturally."
And now Busch might have the momentum to take the title.
"I'd like to think it gives us a lot, but I don't know - talk is cheap," Busch said. "We've got to be able to go out there and perform and just do what we need to do. Being able to do what we did here today was certainly beneficial. I didn't think we were the best car, but we survived and we did what we needed to do.
"It's just about getting to next week, and once we were locked in, it was 'All bets are off, and it's time to go.'"
Harvick was the favorite to win at ISM, where he is a nine-time victor, and started from the pole but an early flat tire made the race more eventful than he expected. He found himself racing against SHR teammates Almirola and Kurt Busch for the final championship-eligible spot, but Busch was wrecked late and Almirola had to win to snatch the berth away from Harvick.
"We kept ourselves in position all day, and there at the end, it was just like everybody wrecking and all over the place," Harvick said. "We just needed to stay out of trouble and try to find a safe spot there."
Brad Keselowski and Kyle Larson, both already eliminated from the playoffs, finished second and third in the race. Almirola was fourth and Harvick fifth.
Harvick was at ISM without his regular crew chief or his regular car chief - and will be without them next weekend, too - as part of the penalties for the illegal spoiler. Yet he was fastest in practice, started on the pole and led the first 72 laps before his tire went flat.
That put Harvick in 30th and one lap down, and he had to work his way to the front the rest of the race. He was aided by a flurry of mistakes by the other championship contenders. Clint Bowyer had a flat tire that caused him to wreck, Kurt Busch was wrecked and that accident collected Chase Elliott, who earlier had been penalized for speeding on pit road. Kurt Busch also had been penalized early in the race for passing the pace car.
The intensity of the race picked up with a flurry of late cautions that began when Ricky Stenhouse Jr. wrecked with 48 laps remaining. SHR drivers used split strategy on the ensuing pit stop as Kurt Busch stayed on the track to move into second and Harvick pitted for new tires to restart sixth. NASCAR then stopped the race for the extensive cleanup needed for Stenhouse's crash, and the cars parked on the track for close to 11 minutes.
But Kurt Busch never got to find out if his strategy was the right one, because he was promptly wrecked on the restart. Denny Hamlin, trying to extend his streak of winning at least once in every season, aggressively tried to dart to the front and while doing so shoved Busch's car into the wall.
As Busch's car ricocheted back into traffic, he tagged Elliott to end the young driver's bid to race his way into the finale.
"Denny came out of nowhere and cleaned us out," Busch said.
Alex Bowman then spun, NASCAR again stopped the race for a cleanup, and Almirola used the sequence to make his play for the victory. He was third, behind teammate Harvick, on the restart.
Almirola dove to the bottom of the track to slip past Harvick and move into second. Another caution with 17 laps remaining put Almirola on the front row alongside Kyle Busch for the restart with 12 to go. But Almirola didn't have much for Busch, who pulled away.
With Almirola out of contention for the victory, Harvick was finally in the clear.