Who will win first in 2018: Chase Elliott or Clint Bowyer?

They’re not the only drivers who would really like to visit Victory Lane soon, but they both are trying to break long streaks they’d just as soon not keep going.

Aside from being affable types who are easy to root for, Chase Elliott and Clint Bowyer wouldn’t seem to have a whole lot in common. The former drives a Chevy, the latter a Ford. The 22-year-old Elliott is one of NASCAR’s much hyped young guns, while Bowyer is unquestionably part of the older guard at 38.

But as ESPN’s Stats & Info department points out, they share a common bond of frustration, the special kind that comes with numerous second-place finishes instead of wins. Bowyer has finished second six times since his last win, which came in the 2012 Bank of America 500 at Charlotte. Elliott is famously still looking for his first NASCAR Cup Series victory, but he’s been the bridesmaid even more often: seven times in 80 Cup Series starts, including five in the 2017 season alone.

Surely, one of these drivers is due for a breakthrough soon. Maybe both of them. The big question is who might get that elusive victory first.

The easy gut response is Elliott, who just seems like he’s on the rapid come-up. In fact, since Darlington last fall, he’s been both remarkably consistent and good, finishing 12 out of 15 races in 11th place or better. To top it off, one of Elliott’s poor finishes during that stretch, a 27th at Martinsville, was a race he was leading with three laps to go until Denny Hamlin spun him out.

Bowyer hasn’t been quite as good over that stretch, though he did come in third in that same Martinsville race and again last week at Atlanta. The argument for him would be that he’s won before in the Cup Series (eight times in all) and that Stewart-Haas Racing looks like the strongest team in the garage right now. Working against him would be the fact that his current streak of 187 races in-between wins is the third-longest in NASCAR history. There’s a silver lining to that dubious distinction, though, because the owner of the second-longest streak just happens to be reigning Cup Series champion Martin Truex Jr.

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Could one of these gents even snatch a win this weekend in Las Vegas? It’s not inconceivable, as they both finished in the top 10 in this race last year. We have a feeling that either the No. 9 or No. 14 in Victory Lane would be a popular sight for many fans and even other drivers, so hopefully it’ll happen for both of them sooner rather than later.