We’ve almost made it to the halfway point in the Race To The Chase. 6 races to go until the top 12 in the standings qualify to compete in the Chase.

This weekend, it’s back to the tricky triangle – Pocono Raceway. The 2.5 mile three cornered tri-oval track is located in Long Pond, PA.

(Photo by Jerry Markland/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Tony Stewart won there last month for his first official points-paying race win as an owner/driver.  He’s been picked as a favorite to win again on Sunday. Stewart could make history as the first owner/driver to sweep Pocono. 6 drivers have swept both Pocono races in the same season: Bobby Allison (1982 for DiGard), Bill Elliott (1985 for Melling), Tim Richmond (1986 for Hendrick), Bobby Labonte (1999 for Gibbs), Jimmie Johnson (2004 for Hendrick) and Denny Hamlin (2006 for Gibbs). In addition, 2 other car owners have swept Pocono with different drivers: Jack Roush in 2005 with Carl Edwards and Kurt Busch and Roger Penske in 2000 with Jeremy Mayfield and Rusty Wallace. A win on Sunday would put Stewart in a class of his own.

“It’s pretty cool if you can win both of them,” Stewart said. “We did that in Dover early in my cup career and that was a pretty cool weekend. It’s hard to win one race. It’s that much harder when you only have two chances. If you can win both of them then it makes it very, very special. Having the first win under our belts and knowing we had a car that drove well here all day, that’s a step in the right direction for us leading into this weekend. We have a lot of confidence even before we hit the race track.”

Stewart has scored 2 wins, 12 top-5 and 15 top-10 finishes with one pole at Pocono Raceway. He’s finished 7th or better in 7 of his last 8 starts. And he’s racin’ the same car this weekend that he drove to victory lane last month.

The 2 other drivers that have been consistently picked to win Sunday’s race are Jeff Gordon and Carl Edwards.

Jeff Gordon leads all active full-time drivers with 4 Pocono wins. He’s finished in the top-5 in 3 of his last 5 races there – including a win in ’07.

Carl Edwards is the defending race winner. He led a race-high 103 laps and finished 2nd last month. He has won twice at Pocono.

Let’s not forget about Mark Martin. Martin leads all drivers with 19 top-5′s and 31 top-10′s, but has yet to win at Pocono Raceway – even after 6 runner-up finishes.

“This has been a good race track for me,” Martin said. “It’s one of those that’s surprising we haven’t won at because we’ve run so well so many times. But we never really, I’m not going to say never; but out of all of those races we’ve been here, we only had ah.. very few dominating cars. We just had a lot of really good cars.”

There are 4 other tracks on the current Cup schedule that Martin has yet to win at. Those are: New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Daytona International Speedway, Homestead-Miami Speedway and Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where Martin posted his best finish to date last week as runner-up.

TV coverage of the Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500 begins at 1 on Sunday (ESPN)

The Nationwide Series will make their series debut at Iowa Speedway beginning Saturday at 4 (ESPN)

The Camping World Truck Series will race at Nashville this Saturday night with TV coverage at 8 (SPEED)