Jimmie Johnson is a smart choice to repeat at Vegas. Credit: Autostock

Fantasy Preview: Vegas

Track promoters don't like the term "cookie-cutter," because each of them wants to believe his is special.

On one hand, this is true. Each track has slightly different banking in the corners, transitions into the turns, and surfaces that are worn by considerably different weather conditions. Heck, some of them even have two doglegs on the front straight instead of a single kink.

About the only thing left for Tony Stewart to accomplish at Vegas is win. Credit: Autostock

Fantasy Power Rankings Cookie-cutter tracks (past three years) Pos. Driver Power Avg. 1. Jimmie Johnson 6.79 2. Tony Stewart 10.06 3. Matt Kenseth 12.13 4. Ryan Newman 12.21 5. Jeff Gordon 12.54 6. Greg Biffle 13.38 7. Carl Edwards 14.21 8. Mark Martin 15.01 9. Kasey Kahne 15.27 10. Elliott Sadler 15.46 11. Clint Bowyer 16.25 12. Dale Earnhardt Jr. 16.39 13. Jeremy Mayfield 18.10 14. Kurt Busch 18.11 15. Casey Mears 18.31 16. Joe Nemechek 18.75 17. Jamie McMurray 18.92 18. Kevin Harvick 19.08 19. David Stremme 19.36 20. Martin Truex Jr. 20.50 21. Bobby Labonte 20.85 22. Denny Hamlin 20.85 23. Brian Vickers 20.86 24. Chad Chaffin 21.17 25. Michael Waltrip 21.41 26. Dale Jarrett 22.62 27. Jeff Burton 22.79 28. Sterling Marlin 22.83 29. Reed Sorenson 23.69 30. Kyle Busch 23.73 31. Dave Blaney 25.39 32. J.J. Yeley 27.75 33. Terry Labonte 29.21 34. Mike Skinner 29.62 35. Scott Riggs 29.68 36. Travis Kvapil 29.75 37. Robby Gordon 30.09 38. Brent Sherman 30.50 39. Kenny Wallace 30.61 40. Kyle Petty 30.91 41. Jeff Green 31.54 42. Ken Schrader 31.68 43. Scott Wimmer 32.67 44. Stanton Barrett 32.79 45. Randy LaJoie 33.82 46. Kevin Lepage 34.70 47. Derrike Cope 37.68 48. Morgan Shepherd 40.18 49. Hermie Sadler 40.88 50. Brandon Ash 42.67

The proof in their similarity, however, is in how they race. Drivers who excel on one of the cookie-cutter tracks often do well on all because the mechanical setup for the car varies only slightly from course to course.

The similarly configured 1.5-mile and 2-mile tracks are controlled by aerodynamics. The slightest change in the balance of the car causes the air to flow differently over the body and can mean tenths-of-a-second in elapsed time.

In today's NASCAR, that slight error can be the difference between battling in the top 10 and falling off the lead lap.

It pays to roll off the hauler fast at these tracks, since most of a car's speed has been found in the garage back home or in preseason testing at Vegas during the winter.

Drivers who have already proved their mettle on the cookie-cutter tracks should dominate the fantasy owner's roster since the setups don't change much from race to race.

The favorites

Jimmie Johnson is the reigning king of the cookie-cutter tracks. Last year, his victory in Vegas and teammate Kyle Busch's second-place finish were shrouded in controversy when they initially failed to clear inspection following the race.

Both cars were too high when they first passed under the sticks, but after they were rolled backward and sent through the templates a second time they had settled to an approved variance.

Later in the season, NASCAR found an inventive set of shocks on the No. 48 car that was not illegal, but spawned a new set of rules to make them so.

His victory at Las Vegas gave Johnson momentum heading into the rest of the cookie-cutter season and he finished second at Atlanta Motor Speedway the following week, was third a month later at Texas Motor Speedway, and visited Victory Lane again at Lowe's Motor Speedway in the Coca-Cola 600.

During the season, the worst Johnson finished was a single result outside the top 10 when he came home 16th at Atlanta in the fall race. In fact, that is the worst Johnson has finished on one of the similarly configured 1.5-mile tracks in his last 23 attempts when he has been running at the end. In that span, he crashed out of one event and had two finishes of 16th, but every other result was in the top 10.

Tony Stewart entered Vegas last year with a similar record of only three poor finishes in his previous 27 attempts on the cookie-cutter tracks. He backed it up with another strong run on this dusty Nevada oval by finishing 10th before stumbling a bit in the first half of the season.

The series rolled into Atlanta one week later, where Stewart finished 17th. He followed with a 31st at Texas and a 24th at Lowe's, but once he turned his season around at Chicagoland at the mid-point, he finished in the top 10 in four of the final five races. Specifically at Vegas, Stewart has been nearly perfect. Since 2000, he has finished outside the top 10 only once, and that "poor" finish was good enough for 12th in 2001.

Fantasy ReportMarty Smith and Danielle Frye make their picks for Las Vegas Sign up for TrackPass now BUY THE NEXTEL i836

Matt Kenseth also finished his season strong on the similarly configured 1.5-mile tracks. After finishing eighth at Vegas last year, Kenseth struggled in exactly the same races as Stewart and turned his season around with a second-place finish at Chicagoland.

Four of the final five cookie-cutter races resulted in Kenseth finishing in the top five, and this type of track was largely responsible for his making the playoffs and running strong in the final 10 races. His victory last week at California only solidifies his pick as a favorite, since that 2-mile track behaves similarly to this slightly smaller version.

The best news for Kenseth fans, however, is that he won two of the last three races at Vegas and has never finished worse than 17th.

Dark horses

Jeff Burton is looking for his third career victory at Las Vegas. Credit: Autostock

Inside the Numbers Drivers at Las Vegas (Cup stats only) Driver No. W T-5 T-10 J. Burton 8 2 3 5 M. Martin 8 1 4 6 J. Gordon 8 1 3 3 S. Marlin 8 1 2 3 B. Labonte 8 0 3 4 J. Mayfield 8 0 2 2 D. Jarrett 8 0 1 3 M. Waltrip 8 0 1 1 J. Nemechek 8 0 0 2 K. Schrader 8 0 0 0 T. Stewart 7 0 4 5 T. Labonte 7 0 0 1 E. Sadler 7 0 0 1 M. Kenseth 6 2 2 3 D. Earnhardt Jr. 6 0 1 2 R. Gordon 6 0 0 0 K. Petty 6 0 0 0 K. Wallace 6 0 0 0 R. Newman 5 0 1 3 K. Harvick 5 0 1 2 Ku. Busch 5 0 1 2 J. Green 5 0 0 0 D. Blaney 5 0 0 0 J. Johnson 4 1 1 2 J. McMurray 3 0 1 1 C. Mears 3 0 0 2 Ky. Busch 2 0 1 1 K. Kahne 2 0 1 1 G. Biffle 2 0 0 1 S. Riggs 2 0 0 0 B. Vickers 2 0 0 0 S. Wimmer 2 0 0 0 C. Edwards 1 0 0 0 S. Barrett 1 0 0 0 T. Kvapil 1 0 0 0 H. Sadler 1 0 0 0 ENTRY LIST •   UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400

Almost every time Casey Mears comes to Vegas, he has a career-best finish. In his rookie season, Mears earned his only top 15 of the season on this track. His struggles on the cookie-cutter tracks later in 2003 did not leave him amongst the favorites when the series rolled back into town in 2004, but he beat the odds and posted another career-best with a seventh.

Last year, Mears duplicated that run with another seventh-place finish, and barely one month later earned his first oval top-five with a fourth on the similarly configured Texas speedway. He wasn't bullet proof on these tracks last year with a pair of poor results at Atlanta and a 34th at Lowe's in May, but his other six cookie-cutter races all finished in the top 10.

Richard Childress Racing is finally turning its program around, and the progress they have made will be apparent when Jeff Burton and Clint Bowyer run strong this weekend.

Burton enters the weekend with two stout runs to his credit in the first two races of the season. He did not get the finish he deserved at Daytona, but last week he earned his top-five by running with the leaders for most of the day.

Burton enters the weekend with confidence on his side after dominating his first three races on this track. He finished second to then-teammate Mark Martin in the inaugural race here in 1998 and then swept the next two events. A 39th in 2001 is his only truly bad result, and in the last four races he has a pair of top-10s and no finish worse than 17th.

Burton is likely to bring Bowyer with him to the front. Some of Bowyer's best results in the Busch Series came on the unrestricted intermediate speedway at Nashville, and while the concrete surface of that track makes it behave substantially different than the cookie-cutters, he proved that he likes to go fast.

During the past two weeks Bowyer has been one of the most pleasant surprises in the rookie class, earning a sixth-place finish at Daytona and running with the lead pack for a while at California before slipping to 14th. During the winter, he was one of the strongest cars in preseason testing at Vegas, posting the 11th-best time in the combined sessions.

Underdogs

As strong as the two Childress mates have been, don't expect it to improve Kevin Harvick's odds.

Driving cars set up by the legendary Dale Earnhardt, Harvick had some of the best results of his career on the similarly configured 1.5-mile tracks. In only his third start he took Earnhardt's car to victory at Atlanta and seven of his first eight attempts on this type of track ended in top-10s.

Since 2002, however, his fortunes have reversed 180 degrees. In the last 33 cookie-cutter races Harvick has one victory, but that came as the result of a fuel-mileage gamble in the 2002 Chicagoland race. It is one of only two top-fives and five top-10s during that span.

Harvick snuck into fifth here at Vegas last year, but he went the rest of the season without another downforce top-10 on either the 1.5 or 2-mile tracks.

Jeff Gordon's struggles last week prove that the No. 24 team still has a lot of work to do on the downforce tracks. His race fell into what has become an all-too-familiar pattern on these courses when he qualified well, ran with the leaders for a while, and then spent the remainder of the race trying to keep up with the adjustments needed to stay on the lead lap.

A late-race pit stop gamble nearly paid off with a top-10, but a sudden rash of cautions at the end of the race kept bunching up the field, and his old tires could not run with the pack.

It's hard to bet against a driver with 11 cookie-cutter victories to his credit, but Gordon is much too expensive to wager your hard-earned salary cap.