Before the NASCAR Cup Series championship is determined Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, NASCAR will crown its Truck champion Friday and Xfinity Series champion Saturday.
Here is something on each of the four drivers to watch (ranked by the sterling committee of myself) plus one additional thing to look for in each of the championship races.
Xfinity Series
Bell has won seven races this year as a rookie. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver is the favorite not just because he has won seven, but he already has won with the pressure on, as he faced a must-win situation Saturday at Phoenix and captured the victory.
Bell says: "After Kansas and Texas, I just kind of accepted the fact that we would be eliminated [at Phoenix]. I looked at the season that we had. We won six races. When I won the fourth race, I was really happy and pretty much called the season -- we were just over halfway [through the season] -- it was a successful year. We were just able to win some more races. ... I gave six other guys a huge advantage to knock me out [at Phoenix] and they didn't, so now nobody has any advantage going into next week. I'll smile about that."
2. Cole Custer
Custer won the Homestead race last year. He didn't just win -- he led 182 of the 200 laps. The win at Texas in the opening race of the semifinal round was big for Custer, who had not won this year until then.
Custer says: "We know that everybody in this top four is going to be fast when we get there. You've got to do your homework before you get there, and we have a really good baseline to go off of, but we're going to have to find a way to make it as good or better because things are going to change a little bit."
Hemric doesn't have a win this year, but he has 15 top-5s -- with 12 finishes of second or third -- and 22 top-10s, including a second at Phoenix leading into Homestead. No driver other than Bell among these four has more than six top-5s. So he has shown enough consistency to contend.
Hemric says: "It's crazy to think about we couldn't win a race, but on the flip side, it's something we didn't have going for us last year -- we didn't have the speed to even contend. We've had a substantial more amount of speed. ... We know the 20 [of Bell] is going to be as tough as anybody at Homestead."
Reddick won the season-opening race at Daytona. Since then, he's had five top-5s. That would make him sound like a significant underdog, but he posted finishes of fifth, second and sixth in the semifinal round. So he has more momentum than many would think. He also is the sole JR Motorsports representative in the championship (and headed to Richard Childress Racing next year).
Reddick says: "I feel really good about Homestead, more so than any track this year. I'm sure we'll get there and everybody is going to be really, really tough. But this year confidence-wise, it literally felt from Daytona on, if we could get to Homestead, I feel we have a really good shot there based off of how I've ran there in the past and how much fun I have at that track."
Whom else to watch: Justin Allgaier and Elliott Sadler. Allgaier won five races and missed the cut, while Sadler, albeit winless, has 14 top-5s this year and is running in his last race.
Allgaier says: "We still won five races this year. I'm not going to be disappointed in that. My goal is to go make it six."
Sadler says: "My last race. I've been doing this for 23 years. I've been doing this since I was 7. It's going to be emotional. It's going to be more relaxing not running for a championship, but it's really going to suck, too."
Camping World Truck Series
Sauter leads the series with six wins and is the only driver who has raced for a Truck title (he won the championship in 2016). One of Sauter's biggest concerns is he uses the NASCAR spec motor, while Brett Moffitt possibly will have a Joe Gibbs Racing motor. NASCAR has adjusted the rules throughout the year, including during the playoffs, to try to help parity between the NASCAR spec and the manufacturer-built engines.
Sauter says: "If it's a race like [at Phoenix] where you've got built motors [by manufacturers] running against spec motors, who the hell knows? It's a joke. I've got nothing good to say about it. ... Who knows what the advantage will be? We'll just go down there and race our tails off and see what happens."
2. Brett Moffitt
Moffitt enters the race following his victory at Phoenix, his fifth win of the season. He didn't need to win that race to advance, but he hopes that he carries good momentum into the championship.
Moffitt says: "If we would have finished third [at Phoenix], we would have had our heads held high, also. Next Friday, the pressure's off, the gloves are off and we just have to go out there and fight and execute and try to win a race. I think it's a race to win the championship and that's what we need to do."
3. Justin Haley
The 19-year-old Haley, Sauter's teammate at GMS Racing, has three wins this year and has shown he can win in pressure situations. He nearly won the Xfinity race earlier this year at Daytona, but NASCAR had ruled his last-lap move was an illegal one before the yellow line.
Haley says: "We've got nothing to lose now, and it's all on the line."
4. Noah Gragson
Gragson has had a solid season, with one win and six poles. He's been fast, and it's a matter of him being able to run consistently up front. He'll race in the Xfinity Series next year for JR Motorsports.
Gragson says: "We'll go down fighting, that's for sure."
Whom else to watch: Todd Gilliland. Gilliland nearly won at Texas until he ran out of gas in the final laps. The Kyle Busch Motorsports driver, who turned 18 during the season, hasn't won this year, and he really could use a win before entering next season as one of the championship favorites.
Gilliland says: "It's been a long time since I've won a race, and the mindset is once you win one Truck race, you know you can do it and the next ones come easier -- the same with every series. With that being said, we've been really close. It's just about sealing the deal."