Roush-laden fantasy teams best bet for Michigan race (cont'd)

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The only driver who has been capable of consistently running with Roush on the 2-mile tracks during the last two years has been Jimmie Johnson. Since the start of 2007, he has one victory, a runner-up finish, two third-place finishes and a sixth in six starts, which means he's failed to crack the top 10 only once in that span. Even with a modest 19th-place finish in the summer 2007 Michigan race, he has an average result of 5.7 during that span and he has a ton of momentum on his side. In his last four attempts of 2008, Johnson has won at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, finished second at Chicagoland Speedway, was third at Pocono Raceway and even managed to finish in the top 10 on the road course last week.

Tony Stewart missed two golden opportunities to win in the last two races and settled for back-to-back second-place finishes at Pocono and Watkins Glen International. That may mean he's going to end the season without a single victory since those are two of his strongest tracks, but it doesn't mean he won't be a good fantasy value. At Michigan, Stewart hasn't always run with the lead pack, but he finds a way to finish with them. In his last 12 attempts on this 2-mile oval, he has finished outside the top 10 only twice and he came close to winning on five occasions with second- or third-place finishes in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006 and as recently as 2007. This summer, he finished fifth on this track.

Dark Horses
Lat year when Red Bull Racing made its stock-car debut, Brian Vickers struggled nearly everywhere, but the only place it seemed he could consistently run strong was on the 2-mile tracks. In four starts at Michigan and Auto Club, he earned three top-10s and he kept that momentum going into 2008 with an 11th in California and a fifth in Michigan so far this season. Both Red Bull racers have been very strong in recent weeks and A.J. Allmendinger is even threatening to crack the top 10 with some regularity, so these two drivers should be watched closely as dark-horse contenders.

Kasey Kahne also deserves a long look this week. During his career, he has swept the top five in even numbered years at Michigan with a second- and fifth-place finish in his rookie season of 2004, a first- and fourth-place finish in 2006 and a second this summer. Moreover, he's earned two top-10s in the last two races at Auto Club, which gives him a three-race streak of such finishes on this track type entering this weekend.

Uncle
Handicapping races is not an easy undertaking. There are so many variables in a race that earning a top-five in NASCAR is one of the toughest tasks in organized sports and Jeff Gordon could be the poster child for this belief. He ran miserably in both road course races this year -- even though he managed to steal a top-five at Infineon Raceway late in the going -- and those were tracks that should have been his to control. Since those courses ran the new car last year, it's hard to blame the new body style for all of his problems, but this team has struggled particularly on the unrestricted, intermediate speedways while trying to walk the razor's edge of setups that the boxy car demands. We're going to cry uncle for the moment, and stop predicting either strong or weak finishes because in the 3M Performance 400 he's as likely to be in the top five as in the high 20s.