Look at Fontana, Vegas to get your read on Atlanta

Déjà vu.

If this past week's race seemed eerily similar to the one that preceded it, there was a good reason for that. For the second consecutive week, Jimmie Johnson beat Kevin Harvick to the line as those drivers finished first and second.

The similarity doesn't end there, however. Mark Martin finished fourth at both Fontana and Las Vegas. Clint Bowyer was eighth in both races ahead of Greg Biffle, who posted back-to-back 10th-place finishes. Another driver, Joey Logano came within a bumper of finishing fifth in consecutive races, but he was edged at the line by Matt Kenseth.

Kenseth's fifth-place finish came on the heels of a seventh at Fontana and one spot behind Logano, Tony Stewart bettered his Fontana result by two spots to finish seventh at Vegas.

Altogether, eight of the top-10 finishers crossed the line at Las Vegas Motor Speedway within two positions of their Auto Club Speedway result and the parallel continued into the top 15. Carl Edwards (12th at Vegas and 13th at Auto Club) David Reutimann (13th compared to 15th) and Kyle Busch (15th compared to 14th) joined the group. Paul Menard finished 17th last week, compared to an 18th at Auto Club.

Further back in the pack, some other drivers had duplicates they would rather forget: David Ragan finished 23rd in both races, A.J. Allmendinger was 25th and Juan Montoya has a hole from which to climb with back-to-back 37ths.

This simply may be a statistical oddity, but it underscores the power of momentum and could be a significant factor as NASCAR hosts back-to-back races on cookie-cutter tracks.

The Favorites

Momentum may be the most important intangible in NASCAR. You cannot measure it and no one can predict when its power will wane, but even a cursory look at the past two weeks supports the argument. In fact, momentum and the need to keep it are largely responsible for Harvick's second-place finish. He struggled throughout the weekend at Vegas after pounding the wall early in the first practice session and qualifying badly. Now he comes to Atlanta Motor Speedway, where he swept the top five last year with a fourth in the spring followed by a second. It's a good bet, he'll be strong again.

The battle at the front of the pack is liable to come down to the same contenders. Jeff Gordon showed a return to dominance at Vegas that fantasy owners haven't seen in at least half a decade. He led the most laps by a wide margin -- pacing the field for 219 circuits -- and even when he was not in the lead, he was not far off. He was outside the top five for only two of the 267 laps and both of those came during a cycle of green-flag pit stops. The only thing that kept him out of Victory Lane was a miscalculation on the final stop when he took two tires to Johnson's four. Gordon finished second in the spring race at Atlanta last year and he is equal to the task again.

Both Harvick and Gordon are going to have to contend with Johnson once more. He confirmed he was the cookie-cutter king last week by winning on a track that has eluded him for the past two years. While Vegas was unkind to him in 2008 and '09, Atlanta has always been a safe haven. Entering this race last year, Johnson had 10 top-10s in his previous 12 starts and an average finish of fifth. Of course, those numbers are going to look pretty good when a driver has three victories and three runner-up finishes that skew his averages. Transmission problems slowed him this past September at Atlanta, but the competition can't count on lightning striking him twice.

Atlanta

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Dark Horses

With one more week to assimilate to fatherhood, Carl Edwards will be back in top form this week. He was less than stellar at Fontana and Vegas with back-to-back top-15s on tracks he previously dominated, but the distractions surrounding the birth of his first child kept him from being 100 percent. Atlanta has always been kind. Ever since sweeping Victory Lane in his first full Cup season, he's been nearly perfect there when he has stayed out of trouble. In 11 Atlanta starts, he has three victories, six top-fives and eight results of seventh or better.

With four results outside the top 20 in his past five Atlanta attempts, Mark Martin is not a sure thing this week, but that could allow him to be the difference maker on your team if your competition takes a short-sighted view. From fall 2004 through spring 2006, he logged four consecutive top-five finishes. This past September, he proved they were not a fluke by coming home fifth at Atlanta and he's riding the same wave of momentum as his Hendrick teammates.

Underdogs

Brian Vickers had a miserable race at Vegas after posting back-to-back top-15s in the first two races of 2010. Sometimes a team simply misses the setup, and there is no reason to assume that will carry over to Atlanta. Last year, Vickers was one of four drivers who swept the top 10 with a fifth in the spring followed by a seventh. That is part of four top-10s in his past five Atlanta starts and it makes him a driver to watch closely in practice and qualification.

It's also time to show some love to Joey Logano. With back-to-back strong runs on the unrestricted, intermediate speedways, he's shown a knack for racing on NASCAR's fastest tracks and that is going to be the key to his long-term success. One day we will be talking about him taking over the role of cookie-cutter king, but until then, he will continue to be a great value as long as he scores top-15 finishes. Last year, he finished 13th at Vegas, was ninth and fifth in the two races at Charlotte and 18th at Chicagoland. He's already scored a top-10 at Vegas this year in the first race of the season on the similarly configured, 1.5-mile tracks.