One and only Indy makes winning paramount

This week, NASCAR will make its 17th trip to the famed Brickyard, but what the track lacks in regard to decades of stock-car history is more than offset by its prominence in the motorsports community. From the first race there, drivers have coveted a Brickyard 400 victory nearly as much as they have a Daytona 500 win and as with every race, only one man will leave Indianapolis Motor Speedway with the trophy.

Indy almost stands alone in terms of types of tracks on which NASCAR runs. Fantasy players will get a little statistical insight from Pocono with its equally flat corners, but the symmetry of this track makes it truly unique. There is not a second Indy date during the year and most of the lessons learned to go fast there will not transfer anywhere else on the schedule, but teams put as much effort into this event as they will on the similarly configured, 1.5- and 2-mile tracks that dominate the schedule.

Indianapolis

This week's fantasy studs, duds and sleepers.

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Nothing short of a victory is acceptable to drivers for this one race, and fantasy owners want to adopt that same philosophy. To dominate this week's contest, you will want the winning driver in your lineup. The good news is that Indy is not prone to surprises; drivers expected to run strong there typically dominate the top-10 spots. That doesn't mean you can't find some good dark horses, however. Juan Montoya immediately established himself as a driver to beat in his rookie season before settling for second and last year, a certain victory was ripped from his grasp following a speeding penalty on pit road.

The Favorites

Picking a winner during the past four years has been pretty easy if you are a Jimmie Johnson fan. En route to four consecutive championships, he set the tone by winning three of the past four Brickyard 400s. In fact, the only thing keeping him from a clean sweep may have been a catastrophic tire failure in 2007 that sent him hard into the wall and out of the race on Lap 60. Placing the No. 48 on your roster won't be completely stress-free, however. In addition to his failure to finish in '07, he didn't make the distance in '04 or '05 with engine failure and crash damage, respectively. He's also had bad luck in his past two races this season, but it's going to be hard to ignore him nonetheless.

With five consecutive top-fives and an average finish of 3.8 since Michigan, the bandwagon for Jeff Gordon is getting pretty full, but he's still riding the longest winless streak of his career. In his second season in 1994, he was an underdog in the second-biggest race of the year, but that did not keep him from putting his name in the record books as the first winner of the Brickyard 400. He repeated that feat three more times, most recently in 2004, and he's swept the top 10 in his past three attempts at this track. Two of those results were top-fives and he has to be favored to finish at least that well again.

Montoya is our third favorite this week. For all of his limitations on tracks where traffic is heavy, he knows how to run away and hide at Indy. His first campaign and last year's dominant performance separate this race track from all others. In the past, it has never mattered if he had momentum on his side entering Indy, so three consecutive sub-15th-place results shouldn't affect your decision. If he runs strong in practice, he's going to carry that speed into Sunday's race. (Continued)