Fantasy NASCAR Pick'Em: 2010 Crown Royal 400

After last week’s exciting race at Talladega, the Sprint Cup Series moves to the bullring that is the Richmond International Raceway for this weekend’s Crown Royal 400.

Kyle Busch won this race last year for his first Richmond victory in Cup and will look to repeat this weekend.

Talladega certainly set a high bar for the racing at Richmond, with record amounts of leaders and lead changes alike. If you were making fantasy picks, I hope you guessed correctly—I generally didn’t.

Jeff Burton and Joey Logano were involved in late-race wrecks, for one. Worst of all, I guessed correctly on Jamie McMurray, but Kevin Harvick managed to sneak by him for the victory. Oh well.

I’m going to bet the farm on Kyle Busch this weekend, if only because the pick seems too good to be true. He has eight top-fives in 10 Richmond starts. Yes, that’s right, top-fives. His average finish is a Jimmie Johnson-esque 6.0.

As for a dark horse, I’m going to stick in the Joe Gibbs Racing camp and select Joey Logano. He’s got an average finish of 16.5 in two Cup races at Richmond, with no top-10s, but he doesn’t fall off the lead lap. He’s also got a solid 6.5 average finish at the track in Nationwide, with one pole.

Three more for the road:

Denny Hamlin’s average finish is nearly as good as his Gibbs teammate Busch’s, a solid 8.5. Hamlin also has one Richmond win to go with four top-fives and five top-10s. He’s also won this season on a short track (Martinsville) already. And hey, with the other two Gibbs drivers already on this list, it’d be incomplete without Denny.

Sticking with the Gibbs trend, ex-Gibbs team leader Tony Stewart won three races at Richmond for the team, including his first career victory late in the 1999 season. Stewart has nine top-fives and 15 top-10s at the track, including a runner-up finish in this event last year, and led at least one lap in exactly half of his Richmond starts.

Finally, Stewart’s teammate and employee Ryan Newman has never DNFed at Richmond, though I’m sure I’ve jinxed him by saying that. (Sorry, Ryan.) His only Richmond win came in the fall of 2003; since then, he’s had two top-five finishes and eight top-10s in 12 starts.

He’s not quite as torrid as he was in his first two seasons at the track, leading at least 24 laps in his first four Richmond starts with the win and two runner-up finishes, but he’s consistent, and he did lead 45 laps in this race last year.