Are we about to lose a front-runner?

Comparing stats right before Restaurant Wars makes me worried!

Restaurant Wars is a milestone each Top Chef season. It’s high stakes and super stressful, and it can be hard to hide among the amazing chefs left. There’s been one chef who was eliminated in Restaurant Wars and came back to win the whole season (Kristen Kish, Season 10 Seattle). Has it been common that really strong chefs are eliminated in Restaurant Wars?

I looked at the ranking of each chef eliminated in Restaurant Wars just prior to Restaurant Wars. So that means, for example, through the elimination challenge of episode 8 of Season 20 World All Stars and through the quickfire at the start of episode 9 of Season 6 Las Vegas. I’m using the ranks and not the actual scores* since there are differing numbers of challenges between seasons at the time of Restaurant Wars.

Of the 22 chefs eliminated in 21 seasons (Season 11 New Orleans had a double elimination),