Jimmie Johnson, left, and Chad Knaus have not finished outside the top 10 at Charlotte in the past six races. Credit: Autostock

Fantasy Preview: Charlotte

The six similarly configured 1.5-mile tracks are anything but cookie-cutter courses, with transitions into the corners and banking that is unique to each, but they are similar enough that a driver's success on all of them can be used to predict how he will run at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

With Texas Motor Speedway finally securing a second date this season, the similarly configured 1.5-mile tracks will play host to nine of the 36 point events that determine the winner of the Nextel Cup. If a driver can find the setup for these tracks, he is guaranteed to have a good year, and if he adds one or two other pieces to the puzzle, that picture will come into focus completely.

Inside the Numbers Jimmie Johnson at Charlotte Year Start Finish 2004 1 1   9 1 2003 37 1   3 3 2002 1 7   3 6 2001 15 39 Average 9.9 8.3

For that reason alone drivers would concentrate on the two races at Charlotte without added incentive.

There is plenty of additional motivation, however: This is the hometown track to the NASCAR elite. With most of the major Cup teams headquartered nearby, the driver and crews, friends and family make up a large contingent in the crowd, and no one wants to struggle in front of loved ones.

The two races at Lowe's are also highly publicized, thanks to the marketing genius of track owner Bruton Smith and promoter Humpy Wheeler. A victory here can make a driver's career; just ask David Pearson, Buddy Baker, Bobby Labonte or Jeff Gordon. Each of these superstars earned their first career victory at Lowe's before going onto establish themselves as one of the top 30 drivers in terms of lifetime trophies.

Love the Nightlife

Added drama will come in the form of another race under the lights.

A twist of fate has three points-paying races and one full-on battle royale contested in the moonshine. The short-track race at Richmond and the Lady in Black were sedate compared to the full-moon madness of the Nextel All-star Challenge, and the emotion is being raised to a fevered pitch just in time to contest 600 miles on one of the fastest tracks on the circuit.

Major incidents in the exhibition races involving Mike Bliss, Brian Vickers, Joe Nemechek, and Kevin Harvick should have you watching the edge of your television for the undercurrent that threatens to wash over the main event.

Jimmie Johnson

The Favorites

Lowe's Motor Speedway is Jimmie's house, and all one needs to do to see that is read the quarterpanel of his Chevrolet. The naming sponsor of the track and the primary advertiser on the No. 48 are one and the same, which gives him added incentive to do well on this fast 1.5-mile oval. Whether Johnson needs the added incentive is open to debate, because he has never struggled on this track. After crashing in a pre-rookie warm-up in 2001, Johnson has been perfect in terms of top-10 finishes. In fact, since the beginning of 2001 he has never finished worse than seventh.

During the last two years he won three of the four races at Lowe's and took the check for the third-place finisher in the only event he did not take home the trophy, which would lead one to think he should be the runaway favorite this week. A top-10 finish is virtually assured, but a third consecutive victory is less likely. In the last four races of 2005 Johnson has struggled to finish in the front half of the pack, and his luck finally ran out last week at Richmond. Languishing in mid-pack traffic, he misjudged the pass on a slower car and ended his night hard in the wall. Even at Darlington, where he finished in seventh, he spent more time out of the top-10 than inside that mark.

Depending on which game you are considering starting Johnson he is either a great bet or a poor value. In the Streak to the Finish and Ultimate Fantasy League games he is practically guaranteed to finish in the top-10, but he is not worth his inflated value in the Cap games, where a finish in the low side of the top-10 is a bad balance compared to what it will cost you to exclude other strong drivers from your roster.

Tony Stewart

Two of those other strong drivers that must be considered this week are the USAC alumni Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman. Both of these drivers are coming off strong showings at Richmond, where they finished in second and third positions behind fellow open-wheel standout Kasey Kahne. The one race during the last two years Johnson failed to win at Lowe's, he crossed the line behind first-place Stewart and second-place Newman.

Pound for pound, Stewart is still the best 1.5-miler in the game, with 25 top-10s in the last 30 races. This is a stat quoted often during the last two seasons each time the series rolls onto a cookie-cutter track, and it will continue to be impressive so long as the driver of the No. 20 racks up the front-of-pack finishes. In that span of 30 events, Stewart boasts an average finish better than 10th despite failing to finish all in three events. With his three DNFs excluded from the record, Stewart has an average finish that is an impressive sixth. Wherever he starts the race, expect Stewart to improve before the checkers wave: in races he has finished on the similarly configured 1.5-mile tracks since 2001, he has improved by six spots on average.

The other side of that coin has Ryan Newman's face on it. As the only pole sitter the cookie-cutter tracks have known in the last five events, he has had no place to go but backwards unless he wins the race, a feat he has not accomplished since 2003 at Kansas. His finishing results are replete with failures to finish, mostly due to crash damage, but the ray of hope can be found in the manner in which he earned his top-fives in the last two races. Newman spent the majority of laps at the head of the field at Darlington and Richmond, and has his momentum returned to him at precisely the right time.

Kyle Busch

Dark Horses

Kyle Busch earned his career-first Craftsman Truck Series victory last week in the support race for the Nextel All-star Challenge and his second career Busch victory also came on this track last year. Considering the level of success captured by the other first time winners at this track in the senior series, he hopes to continue a tradition for fresh rewards. Busch's best finish to date came on the similarly configured track in his hometown of Las Vegas, where he crossed the line second between his teammate Johnson and his brother Kurt Busch. His early career has been marred by crashes, but another stout rookie also tore up a lot of equipment before earning his career-first victory here at Lowe's, and if Busch can emulate teammate Jeff Gordon, he will be very proud.

Lowe's is kind to the young and old alike. It takes a lot of energy to contend for 600 miles and more than four hours to complete the race, so the Young Guns will be well represented at the front of the pack, but the grizzled veterans will catch them in the end. To keep ones car in one piece, a driver needs to be patient and baby the engine along (most races are 500 miles in length or less, and the powerplants are not designed to take much more). Winners of this marathon race watch solid competition retire to the garage just past the 500-mile mark.

Mark Martin

Mark Martin is fresh off his all-star race victory, where he added a million dollars to his retirement fund. In order to secure sponsorship for a Craftsman Truck Series run next year, he needs a points' paying victory as well, and he is a good bet to take one on a track where he previously dominated. From fall 1995 through spring 2002 Martin never finished worse than 12th at Lowe's, and he recorded three victories and 11 top-fives in a span of 11 races; his average finish was fourth. In that span of races, Martin failed to finish only two of the 5,071 laps that made up the race distance.

Either Hendrick Motorsports or Roush Racing has won all but two of the first 11 races of the season, and there is no reason to believe they are about to slack off in front of the hometown crowd.

Bobby Labonte should likewise be expected to finish in sight of the leaders, so long as fortune does not once again turn her face from him. In his last 16 attempts (eight years worth of competition) at Lowe's, Labonte has finished worse than 17th only once and boasts nine top-fives and twelve top-10s. His record on the sister track of Atlanta Motor Speedway is second to none, with six victories in a very short span of time. Given his recent struggles, Labonte may be your best hope to get a leg up on the competition, who will see him as a star-crossed driver, but rest assured he is more than capable of earning a top-five like he did as recently as in back-to-back races at Lowe's in 2002/2003.

Avoidance Principle

The Nextel All-star Challenge always sets the stage for dramatic storylines in the big show. This week the combatants are Mike Bliss and Brian Vickers. A few hundred yards from the finish line of the Nextel Open that would advance one of them into the million dollar dash, Vickers made contact with Bliss and sent him spinning across the line.

Only one driver advances from the Open: Vickers finished third in the main event, while Bliss fumed in his trailer. Six hundred miles is a long time to simmer and if these two drivers find one another on the track the tension may boil over. One thing for which the fantasy owner can be certain is that Bliss will not make it easy for Vickers to get around him.

Neither driver can afford a bad finish this weekend. Vickers has crashed out of two of his five attempts on the similarly configured 1.5-mile tracks and finished well off the pace in the most recent outing at Texas. However, his sub-30th place finishes make his pair of top-10s in the other two events a poor value.

Bliss has crashed out of three of the last six points-paying races for Gene Haas and eventually economics will put a stop to that attrition. Both drivers are certainly capable of running near the head of the pack, with Hendrick Motorsports power under the hood, but all the power in the world won't help if chunks of concrete keep the wheels from rolling.

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.