They say everything is bigger in Texas, but not so of the current points situation in the Nextel Cup Chase for the Championship.

In fact, Jeff Gordon's 9-point lead over Jimmie Johnson heading into Texas is the smallest point margin between 1st and 2nd that we've seen in the four-year history of the Chase.

If you don't think Jeff Gordon is at least a little nervous about his tenuous hold on 1st place, think again. Gordon's top-10 finish at Atlanta last week was bested by Johnson's victory - his second in as many races - allowing Johnson to shave what was a 53-point deficit to just 9 points.

Additionally, Gordon is probably reflecting on the situation last season at this time, when Matt Kenseth was 1st in the standings with a 26-point lead over 2nd-place driver (you guessed it) - Jimmie Johnson. By the time the season ended, Johnson had overtaken Kenseth to win his first Cup title.

And Gordon is no doubt acutely aware of the infamous list that circulates about this time every year - the list of tracks (now down to just two) where Jeff Gordon has never won a Cup race. Those tracks are Texas and Homestead-Miami, coincidentally two of three tracks left on this season's schedule.

If there's one consolation this week for Gordon, it might be the fact that Johnson has never won at Texas either.

Texas Motor Speedway is a relatively new track on the Nextel Cup circuit, first added to the schedule in 1997, as the series tried to include more venues and attract newer fans to the sport than in its traditional regional southeast roots. TMS hosted just one race per year until 2005, when it became one of several 1.5-mile oval tracks "out west" to receive two dates on the yearly schedule.

Notably, Texas is a track that has not been dominated by Chevy drivers in recent years as so many other tracks have been. While it's true that GM drivers have won the last two races here - Tony Stewart last fall and Jeff Burton in the spring - Chevy had been shut out at Texas in the prior seven races dating back to April of 2001. Those races saw five then-Ford drivers - Dale Jarrett, Matt Kenseth, Elliott Sadler, Greg Biffle, and Carl Edwards, take the checkers, along with the Dodges of Ryan Newman and Kasey Kahne.

Jeff Burton (+1300) is the only two-time winner at Texas, but his victories came 10 years apart in 1997 and 2007. Along with the drivers listed above, other winners at Texas are Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Terry Labonte, and Mark Martin.

Among active drivers with more than one start, Denny Hamlin (+1400) has both the best average start and average finish here. With just 4 Texas races under his belt, Hamlin has 4 top 10s, an average start of 8.8, and an average finish of 7.5, finishing 7th, 4th, 10th, and 9th in his races here. Hamlin was one of several cars to experience engine trouble at Atlanta after water apparently got mixed in with the fuel - an inexplicable situation which NASCAR is still investigating at press time.

As previously mentioned, Jimmie Johnson (+460) has not won a race at Texas, but he has run well here overall, and perhaps that is why nascar oddsmakers are currently giving him the nod over Jeff Gordon (+520). In 8 Texas starts, Johnson is 2nd only to Hamlin in the average finish stat with a 10.2 which includes 3 top 5s and 6 top 10s. He was caught up in a crash here in the spring, but finished 2nd to Tony Stewart in this race last fall.

Stewart (+665) and Matt Kenseth (+780), both previous Texas winners, have good records here, Kenseth with an average finish of 11.1 and Stewart, 13.7. In fact, Kenseth has three top-3 finishes in his last four Texas starts and ran 2nd to Jeff Burton in the spring. Kurt Busch (+840) with an average finish of 12.4, has 6 top 10s in 9 starts, though over the last 3 races here that average drops to 17.7.

As for Jeff Gordon, he's one of just a handful of drivers to compete in all 13 Cup races held so far at Texas, amassing 5 top 5s and 6 top 10s with an average finish of 12.8. Gordon has a 2nd and two 3rd-place finishes here and this past spring started on the pole and finished 4th.

Meanwhile Clint Bowyer (+1350), the apparent odd man out in the title hunt, has only made 3 starts at Texas with lukewarm finishes of 19th, 5th, and 16th - the 5th coming in the fall race last year. Bowyer currently trails Gordon by 111 points and Johnson by 102 points in the Chase standings.

Under normal circumstances, a driver who can never be ruled out at Texas is Dale Earnhardt, Jr. He has a soft spot in his heart for this track, the site of his first Cup victory in his rookie season of 2000. Junior has 3 top 5s and 7 tops 10s here with an average finish of 12.8, but had one of many 2007 DNFs in the spring with an engine failure. Junior has admitted to driver errors in the second half of this season as he overreached in his attempts to secure at least one victory before year's end. He made another one in Atlanta, opting to stay out with a loose wheel that eventually fell off and put him hard into the wall.

As was the case in Atlanta last week, teams at Texas will be focusing on not making mistakes that take themselves out of the running, and on recovering quickly if problems do arise.