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.

Dark Horses

With a little more momentum on his side, Tony Stewart easily would be one of our favorites in light of his Indy record. Since 2004, he's won this race twice -- in '05 and '07 -- and finished worse than eighth only one time. Since Dover eight weeks ago, he's managed to get the results fantasy owners anticipate during the hot summer months with top-10s in all but two races, but he hasn't shown any of the authority you've grown to expect at this time of year. Still, the last two times the series was on a flat track, Stewart finished second most recently at New Hampshire and third at Pocono.

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Speculation about where he will race in 2011 is not distracting Kasey Kahne and he's managed to deflect those questions by running at the front of the pack in four of his past five races. Second-place finishes at Michigan and Daytona gave the media something entirely different to talk about and the former sprint-car racer certainly has been immune to short-timer's disease. Better still, Kahne's record at Indy has been more "hit" than "miss." In six attempts there, he's earned two top-fives and four top-10s. Still, he hasn't been untouched by trouble with a pair of sub-35th-place results in back-to-back Brickyards in '06 and '07.

Underdogs

With a failure to qualify in 2003 and back-to-back results in the 30s in '07 and '08, David Reutimann certainly would not be on fantasy owners' radar screens this week if not for his victory in at Chicagoland in NASCAR's most recent contest. That was his second career Cup victory, but the first time he ran away from the field and crossed under the checkers in green-flag conditions. Last year, he was an equally pleasant surprise in the Brickyard 400 with an eighth-place finish, and players can expect even better things from him this week.

Stranger things have happened on this historic track, so this week we are going to offer up Jacques Villeneuve as a dark horse. No one expected Montoya to finish second in his first stock-car race at Indy and undoubtedly no one expects much from the part-time entry of Braun Racing, but that could play into your favor. With long straightaways, horsepower is important at Indy, but it is useless unless the driver can get through Turns 2 and 4 perfectly. Former open-wheel racers have a penchant for doing just that on flat tracks and while Villeneuve won't battle for the win, he could earn a surprising top-15.