Dale Earnhardt Jr. has eight top-10 finishes at Richmond, including a victory in the Spring 2004 event. Credit: Autostock

Fantasy Preview: Richmond

Richmond is the short track that believes it is a speedway. Its D-shaped front stretch leans more toward Fontana's 2-mile track rather than Martinsville's half-mile track, with three-abreast racing on the straightaways and two-wide in the corners.

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Make no mistake, Richmond International Raceway is a short track, and drivers who traditionally do well on the tracks less than a mile in length will dominate on Saturday night. Those drivers who perform equally well on the high-grip, high-torque tracks and the short tracks deserve special attention. It is fitting that Dale Earnhardt Jr. earned his first two Cup victories at Texas Motor Speedway and Richmond, and that after posting these successes has never failed to run strong on the little track in Virginia.

Ryan Newman, Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart likewise have highlight reels on both types of racecourses and require more than a cursory look as the weekend progresses, but Richmond is also kind to dark horses, offering up top-10 finishes to 12 drivers for the first time in the last three years. Fans will see democracy in action at the "action track."

Saturday night under the lights will give every fan some reason to cheer.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.

The Favorites

Slowly but surely Earnhardt is turning his season around and getting the former No. 15 cars dialed-in to his style of driving. The communication with the team, however, is still lacking and the frustration in his voice is apparent every time a snippet of conversation is broadcast. Fixing this part of the equation is proving to be a little more difficult for Earnhardt, and after a somewhat stormy relationship with his cousins, the Eurys, last year his diplomatic skills need honing.

The good news is that as soon as something good happens to the team, the chemistry will immediately improve. Earnhardt needs not only a good finish but a strong run throughout the night to restore his confidence. Richmond is a good place to come to with so much on the line; Earnhardt always runs strong here. From a 10th-place finish in his first outing through his first- and second-place finishes at this track last year, he has struggled only once. In the spring race of 2002 he was caught up in a crash and limped home 36th after a career best qualification on the outside pole.

The 2005 season has been one of domination for the drivers who have won. When a driver is on his mark he not only wins, but leads the most laps and spends most of the day in the top-five. Earnhardt likely is to have just such a week with a record of two victories and four other top-fives in only 11 races.

Ryan Newman

Another driver in need of a good run this week is Ryan Newman.

Sweeps in a season are hard to come by and nearly impossible for rookies to attain, but Newman nearly pulled that off in 2002. He finished in the runner-up spot to Tony Stewart in the spring race and to Matt Kenseth in the fall. Stewart is the only active driver other than Rusty Wallace with more than two victories at RIR, and Kenseth has top-10 finishes in six of 10 starts. Newman sustained damage in a four-car pileup on Lap 269 in the 2003 spring race and returned to the track to log only a handful of laps just as rain shortened the event, but at least he was running at the end of the race. In fact, Newman has never failed to be on the track when the checkered flag waves over this course.

Newman came back with a vengeance that fall and led 125 laps including the one that mattered most: the final one. His victory in the fall of 2003 was followed by a ninth in this race last year, and a pattern begins to develop: he struggled to 20th in the fall event last year, and has run well in two races and then poorly in a third in his first six races of competition at Richmond. If the pattern holds, he is due another strong finish. On the heels of his strong run at Darlington, what he has to recommend him most is his lap count on this little track. In six previous attempts, he has never failed to lead a lap and if he can get ahead of trouble on the track he will be at the front of the field during the chase for the checkers.

Jeff Gordon

The season has been dominated by Roush Racing and Hendrick Motorsports so far, and the list of favorites would not be complete without at least one driver from their ranks mentioned. The racer with the best record in the last two years is Jeff Gordon.

Gordon enters the race with a four-race streak of finishes 16th or better on this track and 10 races long on the combined short tracks. Included in his 10 race short track streak are two victories at Martinsville and a third-place finish here at Richmond last fall. Even while he has struggled so far in 2005, Gordon has managed to earn three trophies and finish in the top-15 in all but two events: he was swept into another driver's accident at Atlanta Motor Speedway and blew an engine at California Speedway. Finishing first and second in his last two outings, Gordon is ready to concentrate on the long summer schedule that will determine who makes the second Chase for the Championship, and he knows that at this point in the season the most important way to build momentum is to win races. If he must go-for-broke to record them, the points hardly matter, and a driver with his skill and that attitude is a threat to win on any given weekend.

Mike Bliss

Dark Horses

Twelve drivers have earned their first top-10 finish at Richmond in the last six races. While some of these men have only competed in a handful of events, and are likely to earn another before long, other drivers such as Michael Waltrip (with 38 starts), Jeff Green (10), Robby Gordon (10), Mike Wallace (nine), and Dave Blaney (nine) have made quite a few shows with only the single highlight. Gordon's fourth-place finish here in 2003 is made even more amazing by the fact it is the only top-10 he has ever earned on a short track and one of only two top-15s.

As a tribute to the democracy of this track, the weekend's dark horses will be truly black. Mike Bliss has made only two starts at this track; his first came in 2000 driving for the ill-fated Eel River Racing team; he crashed and finished 41st. Last spring, still heady from his appointment to drive the No. 0 car, he started way back in the field in 33rd and was not considered a threat before the green flag waved. Continuing a perplexing pattern of success for former also-rans, he stormed to the front to finish fourth. Lightening may not strike twice, but it won't cost much to have your lightening-rod in place if it does.

The next dark horse has attempted to make 78 races in his Cup career and watched while his brother earned coveted rides with two major teams. Of his 78 attempts, he has qualified for 46 events and has a career best finish of 18th on his home-state track here at Richmond; his second best finish of 23rd also came here that same year in 2002 driving a self-owned car. With 12 drivers earning a top-10 on this track for the first time in their careers during the last six races, Richmond is ready to give one up to Hermie Sadler.

Sadler has been buying engines from his brother Elliott's team-owner Robert Yates this year, and he has run much better than a casual observer would imagine. In the six races for which he qualified, Sadler crashed out of three and suffered damage in a fourth. He would likely have crept into the top-10 at Talladega a couple of weeks ago if not for the inevitable Big One crash.

Better still, in the two races that make up his career best finishes at Richmond he swept under the checkers within two laps of the leader. In order to earn a top-10 this week, Hermie will need a little luck to come his way, but think of how shocked and amazed your competitors will be if he earns that career-best finish while on your roster.

Elliott Sadler

Avoidance Principle

The Memorial Day picnic around the Sadler homestead could be a little strained if Hermie breaks into the top-10 for the first time in his career, because brother Elliott Sadler is more likely to struggle. In 12 career attempts, Elliott has finished in the top-15 only once (and never in the top-10), sporting an average finish of nearly 27th.

As good as his season was last year, he managed to creep into the top-20 in both races here, but did so in spite of not completing all the laps of either event. He was one lap down to the leaders in both the spring and fall races, and in fact has never finished on the same lap as the leaders. On the whole, his luck on the combined short tracks is not much better. With several top-10s at Bristol and a pair at Martinsville to boost his average, he nonetheless has a career short track average of only 24th in 39 attempts.

Casey Mears

As strong as he has run on most tracks this year, it seems unlikely to wave a red flag over Casey Mears, but he has never found the handle on this track. His career best finish of 28th came in his first attempt of his rookie year, and it has literally been downhill ever since, with a pair of 30-something finishes and a 41st thrown in for bad measure.

In the 800 laps of competition last year, Mears never cracked the top-five and spent only 16 circuits in the top 10 (2 percent) which put him in harm's way too often. Crash damage was in fact what slowed him in three of the previous four races. In the Busch series he has not had any better luck: in four career starts in the support division his best finish is 23rd, and he crashed out of the last two races he entered.

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.

Active Drivers Performance Leaders Starts No. Victories No. Poles No. R. Rudd 52 R. Wallace 6 J. Gordon 4 K. Petty 46 T. Stewart 3 R. Wallace 3 R. Wallace 42 Two with 3 M. Martin 3 Top Fives No. Top 10s No. Avg. Finish No. Starts R. Wallace 21 R. Wallace 29 C. Edwards 6.0 1 R. Rudd 20 R. Rudd 28 D. Earnhardt Jr. 8.8 11 M. Martin 12 M. Martin 22 R. Wallace 9.1 42 Races Led No. Laps Led No. Laps Finished No. Starts R. Wallace 24 R. Wallace 3,023 C. Edwards 100.0 1 J. Gordon 17 J. Burton 874 Ku. Busch 99.2 8 R. Rudd 17 R. Rudd 867 D. Earnhardt Jr. 98.3 11

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