Clint Bowyer has quietly moved up in the points standings with 21 top-10 finishes this season.

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Tony Stewart's chances to repeat as Sprint Cup champion are up in smoke. Jeff Gordon will remain stuck on four career championships for yet another year. The title hunt is over for Denny Hamlin, and it never really started for either Matt Kenseth or Kevin Harvick. And Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been making more news off the track lately than he has on it.

Some of the biggest names in NASCAR have fallen out of championship contention in recent weeks. Yet with only three races to go, there is one driver who continues to lurk in the shadows, prepared to pounce if anything goes wrong with frontrunners Jimmie Johnson and Brad Keselowski. A driver who is well known among NASCAR fans, but is rarely mentioned when talk turns to title chances.

That needs to change. Because in his first year with Michael Waltrip Racing, Clint Bowyer is proving that he is indeed one of the best in the sport. His three victories this season are impressive enough, especially for a driver who had only five career wins over his first six seasons combined. But the most important stat -- the championship-worthy stat -- is his 21 top-10 finishes. That ties him with Keselowski for the second-most top-10s this season, behind only Johnson.

That level of consistency often shows up in the point standings more than victories do. And sure enough, Bowyer is currently nestled in third place in the standings, a lengthy 26 points out of first but still close enough to have a legitimate shot at the title should something go wrong with the top two. After Johnson took over the points lead last week, he quickly proclaimed, "Anything can happen. [Keselowski and I] could both wad it up next week [in an accident] and Clint Bowyer is your champion. You never know."

Indeed, you never do; proven by the fact that Bowyer is even being mentioned as a possible champion this year. Before this season, he seemed to fall into that second-tier of drivers who are good but not great. Drivers who run near the front more often than not and make it to Victory Lane on occasion, but simply are not a factor when the championship trophy is in sight.

Bowyer has truly been in contention for the title only once. That was in 2007, his second year in the Sprint Cup Series driving for Richard Childress Racing, when he was in third place in the standings three races into the Chase before fading down the stretch. He finished fifth in the standings in 2008, then failed to make the Chase in two of the next three seasons, finishing a distant 10th in the one year he did qualify.

So Bowyer's resume simply has not been championship caliber before this season. And there was no reason to think that was going to change this year; Bowyer made the switch from RCR to Michael Waltrip Racing, an organization that had struggled with financing over the years and had never even placed a driver in the Chase. If anything, it seemed Bowyer had basically thrown away whatever slim chance he had of being a championship contender.

Sure enough, Bowyer sputtered out of the gate this season, posting only five top-10 finishes in the first dozen races. He showed some slight improvement in June and July, picking up a victory on the road course at Sonoma. Still, when the series left Indianapolis Motor Speedway in late July, Bowyer had finished in the top-10 in only half his starts, and he was in danger of not even making the Chase.

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Cary Estes: Clint Bowyer's unexpected success puts him not far from NASCAR title