As they enter Saturday night's race, the separation from third-place Kevin Harvick to 11th-place Kasey Kahne is just 147 points. The separations between individual positions can barely be threaded through the eye of a needle.
Here they are in order:
From Harvick to Jeff Gordon - 45 points
From Gordon to Kyle Busch - seven points
(how bad does Busch's 25-point penalty from his temper tantrum at Lowe's look now?)
From Kyle Busch to Dale Earnhardt, Jr. - 18 points
From Earnhardt, Jr. to Denny Hamlin - one point
From Hamlin to Tony Stewart - 29 points
From Stewart to Mark Martin - 13 points
From Martin to Jeff Burton - two points
From Burton to Kahne - 30 points

One thing is for certain when the race arrives on Saturday night (pre-race show at 5 p.m., green flag just after 5:30 on TNT): The order of the final standings for the Chase will NOT be as it currently stands.
Since NASCAR announced the addition of an 11th driver should Kahne or anyone else end up tied for 10th place after Richmond, that adds a big helping of additional drama.
The stats hacks at Stats LLC have determined that there are still 725,760 different possibilities for the order of the top 11 drivers. I'm only thinking of one.
Just get me some drama and pass the remote.