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Seldom has NASCAR made more sense than in the first two races of the second segment of the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

Come to think of it, seldom has NASCAR made sense at all, but that’s a recurring theme from which I shall today depart.

Since NASCAR began its Chase format in 2004, Jimmie Johnson has won six championships. He won at Charlotte. Since NASCAR began the current version of the Chase in 2014 – 16 to 12 to eight to four, over 10 races – the only driver who has advanced to every round is Kevin Harvick. He won at Kansas.

This unpredictable format just provided the most predictable of outcomes on consecutive Sundays. Some coincidence was involved.

The resulting silver lining is also predictable. It’s predictable that Talladega Superspeedway is going to be unpredictable.

Make sense? Of course not.

A look at the standings suggests several drivers have enough of a cushion to make the Round of 8 on the basis of points. A look at the schedule reveals that the next race is at Talladega. The two cancel each other out.

The longest shot is rookie Chase Elliott, who really has to win this race even though he has not yet won any Cup race. That is, unless several drivers separating him from eighth place crash catastrophically on, say, the 17th lap.

Which could happen, even though it would be weird.

How can the Chase keep going … without a Chase?

The Heir of Awesomeness has a big advantage, though. He drives for Hendrick Motorsports, and in this Talladega race, he has three teammates – Johnson, Kasey Kahne and Alex Bowman – who have little incentive to do anything other than help Elliott out. Johnson is already in the next round, and Kahne and Bowman weren’t in the Chase to begin with.

At the end of last week’s Hollywood Casino 400, teammates Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch fought it out for second place and, by so doing, let Harvick slip away. That won’t happen at Talladega, where restricted horsepower acts like glue on the lead pack, anyway, and where Team Hendrick won’t get distracted by squabbling among themselves.

All for one, and one for all! Young Chase might as well be named D’Artagnan.

Uh, The Three Musketeers. D’Artagnan, Pearson and Petty.

Brad Keselowski won the earlier race at Talladega and needs to win this one. It would make him the favorite at other tracks. At this one – a perilous, coiled rattlesnake of a race track – he is merely most likely to find a needle in that haystack.

The one with the rattlesnake in it.