I don't think the VK run at champs was bad, it was a new team atm, with mw going to a new role and new team with 1 month of practice, and even so they played toe-to-toe against Acend and other teams in scrims. I agree that there's no underdog coming to the LCQ, but because of the scrims level in Brazil against LAS, there's a giant gap between them.
BR have Los Grandes, MIBR, LOUD, NIP, VK, Furia, Sharks and a lot of top tier teams.
LAS have like 2 or 3 good teams outside KRU and LEV, and even so the gap between them are HUGE, while in BR the gap isn't that big (between the teams that I said)
I do think that LEV have great chances of taking the 2nd slot, but I don't think that's the case, since they're going to México and the LATAM North teams are bad, while NA teams don't want to scrim against any LATAM team outside KRU.