Insider's View: Wally Dallenbach

It's great for NASCAR to come into a city the size of Chicago this weekend for the Tropicana 400 at Chicagoland Speedway. Now Joliet is a little bit outside of downtown Chicago, like 50 miles, but the market is about seven million people and that's huge exposure for the sport.

	Wally Dallenbach

Chicagoland is what a lot of the drivers call a "cookie cutter" 1.5-mile track, but it's wicked fast. It's a sister track to Kansas Speedway and both are smooth and wide. You carry a lot of speed down the dogleg front stretch into turn one, so it's critical to get down to the bottom of the race track when you go through there. There isn't a lot of grip out of the groove, so once you get up in the gray area you're going to be in trouble.

It's still going to take some time to work in a second groove at Chicago. One started to come in a little last year and you saw guys trying to work the outside especially through three and four. But it's going to take some more rubber getting laid down before a true second groove shows up. It may start to appear again by Sunday after all the practice, qualifying and the Busch race of the early weekend, but I'd suspect it's still going to be mostly a one groove race.

Kevin Harvick has a perfect record in Joliet winning the first two Tropicana 400s. He hasn't won a race since his win in Chicago last July and there's some confidence coming from the RCR group these days. Harvick tested well at Chicagoland a couple weeks ago so I think there's still some magic in the No. 29 car and he'll be in contention for the three-peat.

Matt Kenseth's best finish has been 7th at Joliet back in 2001, but I still like his chances on Sunday. Matt's smooth driving style and his patience are beneficial at a place like Chicagoland.

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Jimmie Johnson won his first career Busch race at Chicago in 2001 and finished 4th in his Winston Cup debut at the track last season. I look for him to be a factor on Sunday.

Finally Ryan Newman should be in the hunt in Chicago. He notched a Top 5 there last season and is as solid as they come on the mile and a halfs.

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