Martinsville Speedway Credit: Autostock

Fantasy Preview: Martinsville

As one of only three short tracks still active on the senior circuit, Martinsville gives the driver a chance to fall back on skills developed while cutting his teeth in the formative years.

As the only short track in the final 10-race Chase for the Nextel Cup, it is a chance for old-time fans to watch their favorites beat and bang and have some fun.

NASCAR's schedule was so well-balanced previous to the announcement of the new playoff style format that no rearrangement was required in order to have a representative mix of track types in the determining collection of races.

Flat and short

Martinsville's size and shape makes it somewhat unique in NASCAR competition. Its long straightaways and tight turns make it resemble a paper clip more than a racetrack, and in proportion it has the tightest corners in auto racing.

VIDEO Fantasy Report Marty and Danielle preview this week's action at Martinsville •   Latest fantasy news & notes

NASCAR has been visiting this track since the series began. In 1949, Martinsville was a dirt oval, but it quickly bowed to the wave of the future and was paved in 1955. The series has come to the track twice per year forever, so the drivers have had ample opportunities to master its ways.

Helping them sharpen their skills -- and you determine your roster -- are four other tracks: the short tracks and the flat tracks. In order to determine who has the best chance of winning at Martinsville, you should study the finishing results on the two other short tracks: Bristol Motor Speedway and Richmond International Raceway.

Short tracks take an aggressive patience to navigate. Occasionally a driver must put a bumper to his competitor to gently move him out of the way. Too much aggression will dent his car's nose and cause him to overheat, or it might cause an accident that will sweep will include him before it is finished.

One should also look to the other flat tracks on the circuit: New Hampshire International Speedway and Phoenix International Raceway. In order to navigate the flat tracks, a driver needs brakes of steel. They actually use carbon fiber -- a substance stronger than steel -- to slow their cars for entry into the turns.

If they want to accelerate out of the corners quickly, however, they need a perfectly balanced car that rolls through the center effortlessly. Martinsville is a momentum track and if a driver looses speed at the apex of a turn -- at the slowest part of the track -- he will pay the price in terms of slower top-end speed entering the next corner, nearly a half lap away.

The favorites

Gordon and Earnhardt Jr. battle for position at Martinsville. Credit: Autostock

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is both the hottest short track and flat track driver on the circuit at the moment. Even with a little crash damage at Richmond this September, Earnhardt Jr. posted a runner-up finish to a surprisingly fast Jeremy Mayfield. Had Mayfield faltered, this would have been Earnhardt Jr.'s third consecutive short track victory, following checkers at Bristol and Richmond. In his last 21 races on tracks less than a mile in length, Earnhardt Jr. has recorded 13 top-fives (62%) and 15 top-10s (71%). Here at Martinsville, he has five top-fives in the last five events without recording a victory.

On the flat tracks of Martinsville, New Hampshire, and Phoenix, Earnhardt Jr. recorded six consecutive top-6 finishes before finally breaking into Victory Lane in the desert at the close of 2004. He is a driver who needs experience on a track in order to dominate it.

Jeff Gordon swept Martinsville last year and was well on his way to a three-peat in the Spring event before a large chunk of asphalt broke from the track and ripped his suspension apart. It is a testament to just how strong his car was before the incident that he managed to hang onto the lead pack and finish in sixth. Gordon feels Martinsville owes him a victory, or at the very least a top-five finish for the indignity visited on him earlier.

After surviving two accidents at Lowe's Motor Speedway last week to finish in the runner-up position behind teammate Jimmie Johnson, Gordon enters Martinsville with luck on his side. Finishing the race in third, he was followed closely over the line by Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kurt Busch, which means that he failed to make up any points on either of the two contestants that are ahead of him in the standings.

Earnhardt Jr.'s strength on the short tracks makes it unlikely that he will gain an advantage over him unless Gordon can dominate the race, lead the most laps and win. With five career victories on this track, he is certainly capable of doing just that.

Matt Kenseth

Matt Kenseth's is not the first name that pops into one's head when setting a short track roster, but he has earned 13 top-10s (76 percent) in his last 17 attempts, including a victory at Richmond in 2002.

He has yet to win at Martinsville, but he came close in that same season with a second-place finish in the Spring race. His most recent results at Martinsville have been less impressive, with three consecutive finishes outside the top 10, but he broke back into the front of the pack earlier this year with an eighth.

Dark horses

Jamie McMurray

Jamie McMurray is another driver who does not scream "start me" on a short track, but if you are looking for an inexpensive yeoman driver who is almost guaranteed to earn a top-10 finish, you will want to give him a second look.

Six of his last eight races have resulted in top-10 finishes (75 percent). With only one of these strong finishes resulting in a top-five, McMurray is not a threat to win, but that is not what you need from this level of your roster.

If his short track record is not enough to encourage you to add him, consider how strong he is on the flat tracks: Five of McMurray's last six races (83 percent) have ended in top-10s and all of them have been 12th or better. McMurray topped out with a fifth-place finish in his most recent flat-track race at New Hampshire in September.

Rusty Wallace's victory here in the spring was no fluke and six previous victories prove that. His day got off to an exciting start on Lap 55 in last year's edition of this race when he and Jimmy Spencer came together in Turn 4 and the two spun.

On Lap 138 he was involved in a four-car incident with Jimmie Johnson, Hermie Sadler, and McMurray. He overcame those two shunts and drove into the lead on Lap 181 and held it for 18 circuits. His luck finally ran out in the final stages of the race when he crashed for a third time on the frontstretch. He finished the race three laps off the pace in 29th.

Rusty Wallace

Discounting that one race and its apparent vendetta against Wallace, he has a nearly perfect streak of top-15 finishes during the last five years at Martinsville. In that span, he has recorded an average finish of 11th. Wallace has been consistently strong in his career on the short tracks. Since first visiting Victory Lane at Bristol 112 races ago, he has only once posted more than two consecutive short-track finishes outside of the top-10.

Dale Jarrett's struggles in the last two years have broken some pretty impressive streaks, but few are better than the success he experienced on the flat tracks of Martinsville, New Hampshire and Phoenix. From the 1999 NAPA AutoCare 500 here at Martinsville through the 2002 Checker Auto Parts 500k at Phoenix (17 consecutive races), Jarrett never finished outside of the top 10. Included in this streak were victories at Martinsville and New Hampshire and another runner-up on this short .5-miler.

Avoidance principle

You might be tempted to place Kevin Harvick on your roster this week, considering his three runner-up finishes on short tracks, but before making that final commitment remember that none of these came at Martinsville, and that his average on tracks less than one mile in length is only 16th in 22 starts.

His record on flat tracks is even worse. In 17 career starts at Martinsville, New Hampshire, and Phoenix he has averaged only 18th. As you drill down the numbers continue to be discouraging. At Martinsville, Harvick has only recorded a single top-10 and no top-fives in six previous attempts.

Jeremy Mayfield

Jeremy Mayfield's victory at Richmond was not only dramatic, but also somewhat surprising. In 59 previous starts he had failed to record a single victory and had only five top-fives in route to an average finish of 21st. On the flat tracks, his record is much less encouraging. In his last 15 starts, Mayfield has managed to log only a single top-10.

The statistics that matter the most, however, are how he does at Martinsville, and on this track he has failed to record a single top-10 and has only one top-15 in his last seven starts. In that span of races, his average finish is merely 31st and he has failed to finish twice due to his engine overheating.

Dan Beaver's fantasy analysis appears weekly on the afternoon prior to Nextel Cup qualifying. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.