After pick 'em at 'Dega, Richmond brings stability

Last week's Aaron's 499 lived up to its billing; not only was the finishing order in question from the drop of the green, but nearly every lap was up for grabs. In a race that featured records for 88 lead changes and 29 different leaders, no one led more than nine circuits until the very end of the show when Jeff Burton and then Jamie McMurray established a beachhead in the front of the field.

Even then, the finish was still far from decided as McMurray and his teammate Juan Montoya were running on fumes and had to survive 12 extra laps and three green-white-checkered restarts to claim their top-fives.

Richmond

This week's fantasy studs, duds and sleepers.

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Kevin Harvick won the last-lap battle and swept across the finish line by the eighth-closest margin of victory since the advent of electronic scoring and no one could say the fans didn't get their money's worth. With multi-car accidents in four cautions at the end of the race that eliminated more than a dozen cars and marquee drivers such as Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Burton and Ryan Newman from contention, your lineup probably took a beating.

There might not be a huge reprieve coming your way this week either -- short tracks can be just as treacherous as restrictor-plate superspeedways. Fortunately, someone forgot to tell Richmond International Raceway that it was a short track.

This .75-mile speedway might be NASCAR's perfect track. With wide corners and a smooth racing surface, drivers can avoid trouble, but they cannot get away from one another. The competition will be just as close as it was last week at Talladega, but you probably won't see your lineup decimated by the Big One.

The Favorites

When Denny Hamlin left Martinsville several weeks ago, there were a lot of questions about his immediate future. Pending surgery for a torn ACL caused fantasy owners to be a little conservative at Phoenix because they did not know how he would perform. That turned out to be the right decision -- but for the wrong reason. Hamlin lost a lap early in the race and was never able to regain it, but that did not detract from his performance. A week later, he was back in Victory Lane at Texas and the question marks disappeared. You can handicap him by the numbers this week and that means he'll top the list on a short track. Hamlin has won three of the past four contests on courses less than a mile in length and he's always at his best in front of the hometown crowd. (Continued)