crazy!!!
By Dan Beaver, Special to NASCAR.COM
August 2, 2007
04:26 PM EDT
In order to allow ESPN to kick off its coverage with a bang, NASCAR reversed the schedule to put the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard at Indianapolis Motor Speedway before the Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway, but fantasy owners are unaffected. Back-to-back races on the 2.5-mile flat tracks still allow drivers and owners to develop some momentum.
Pocono may be the oddest looking track on the circuit with its triangular shape, but that doesn’t mean that the skills learned on other flat tracks do not apply. Turn 2, otherwise known as the Tunnel Turn, was patterned after Indy’s famed corners only with one degree less in banking. The radius of the corner is also a little tighter to account for the unique configuration, but today’s NASCAR driver will adjust to that slight difference without missing a beat.
Traditional wisdom says that a driver needs to go fast in two of the three corners to excel at Pocono, so teams that come to this track with a fast setup on their cars need only to massage the springs and shocks to get through Turn 3, which at 6 degrees of banking is one of the lowest corners on the circuit. Pocono also acts like a road course with exclusively left-hand turns, and a road-racing maxim says that a driver wants to be fastest on the corner that leads to the finish line.
Because this track behaves like a road course, many of the drivers who are strong this week at Pocono will also be stout next week at Watkins Glen International, so keep that in mind while setting your roster. This is a good part of the schedule to save on allocations and place-and-hold your marquee men.
The Three Musketeers
On a track with three distinct turns, it is only fitting that three drivers stand head and shoulders above the rest on flat tracks. Jeff Gordon, Denny Hamlin and Tony Stewart have practically swept the top 15 on the flat tracks of Pocono, Indy, Phoenix International Raceway, New Hampshire International Speedway and Martinsville Speedway since the beginning of the 2006 season.
Gordon’s single bad encounter on the flat tracks came in last spring’s Pocono 500 when he experienced catastrophic brake failure and destroyed his Chevy. He was running in the top 10 when that happened, however, and nine of his next 11 races on the lightly banked tracks have ended in top-five finishes. These include victories at Phoenix and Pocono, as well as runner-up results at New Hampshire and Martinsville. Last week, he finished third in one of the biggest races of the season, and he is filled with confidence entering this weekend.
Hamlin crashed out of the first two flat-track races at Martinsville and Phoenix last year, and then swept the top 10 in the next 11 events on this type of track. He also swept Victory Lane last year at Pocono after starting on the pole in both events. This spring, he was beaten in time trials by Ryan Newman, but after starting on the outside of the front row, he quickly took the lead and held it for most of the race. His sixth-place finish in the Pocono 500 was attributable more the timing of his pit stop and the rain than any lack of strength, and he made up for that momentary lapse with a victory at New Hampshire. Last week, he proved to be fallible when he ran out of gas entering the pits and lost a lap to finish 22nd, but that will only redouble his efforts at Pocono.
Finally, Stewart has the most momentum of the entire field after winning back-to-back races for the seventh time in his career at Chicagoland Speedway and last week at Indy. On the flat tracks, his single bad finish came in last spring’s New Hampshire race, but every other result has been in the top 15. Since the start of 2006, Stewart has two flat-track victories at Martinsville and Indy plus another four races in which he finished either second or third, which makes him an outstanding value if you can afford him.
Between them, these three drivers have earned 36 top-15s in 42 combined starts since the beginning of the 2006 season and averaged a finish of 8.1, so if you can squeeze out the budget to get all three, your decision has already been made for you. (Continued)