Fantasy Pick 'Em: 2010 Auto Club 500

One race down, 35 to go, as the Sprint Cup Series heads to Auto Club Speedway for the Auto Club 500.

Jamie McMurray will look to repeat Matt Kenseth’s 2009 feat of sweeping the first two races of the season—at a track where he has an average finish of 16.4. California is McMurray’s fifth-best track of those on the current schedule.

My pick for Daytona, Tony Stewart, finished 22nd, leaving me with 97 points on the weekend. My dark horse, John Andretti, slapped the wall and ended up 38th.

As for my other three suggestions, only Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a strong run, finishing second. Mark Martin faltered to finish 12th, and Marcos Ambrose blew a motor after 79 laps to wind up 41st.

Not a great start to my year, but that’s Daytona.

If you’re looking for a sure bet at California, don’t just go by who won the 500. Since Fontana assumed the second race of the season in 2005, only Kenseth has done the double. Jimmie Johnson finished second at the track in 2006, but in none of the other cases has the Daytona winner finished better than double digits.

Daytona winners’ average finish at California during the past five years is an even 12, mostly brought up by those two.

The winners at California usually come from the middle of the pack at Daytona. Ignoring Kenseth’s win last year, the average finish of California winners at Daytona from 2005-08 was 21.5.

Regardless of all that, my pick for California is Kenseth. This one seems like an easy call.

Roush Fenway Racing Fords have won the past five spring races at California, as well as 10 of 19 races at the track overall. Kenseth won this race in 2006, 2007, and last year. His average finish of 9.2 is third-best among active drivers. A victory could propel Kenseth into the points lead.

As for a dark horse, I’m picking David Ragan. We can call him a dark horse, right? He still hasn’t won a Sprint Cup race, and he had a generally horrible season in 2009. But his seventh place in the fall California race was his second-best finish of 2009. He’s also never failed to finish below 17th at the track, which is either a really good omen for Sunday or a hint that he’s overdue for a bad finish.

Per tradition, three other suggestions:

Johnson’s an easy pick. You don’t just stumble into a 5.8 average finish in the Sprint Cup Series at any given track—you’ve gotta be good. Johnson’s obviously good, as his four Sprint Cups attest to. He’s even better at California, with no finishes worse than 16th, no DNFs, zero finishes off of the lead lap, and at least 31 laps led in the past six races at his home track. I only pick against him because none of his four wins at the track came in February.

Kyle Busch is a solid, yet interesting choice if you’re looking to spice things up. He’s not as easy of a pick as the Roush or Hendrick drivers, but he did have a streak of eight California top 10s before last fall’s 24th-place finish, and not even Johnson—six and counting—can say that.

I’m going to give McMurray the benefit of the doubt and my final pick. The past four years have been pretty abysmal for the Daytona 500 winner, especially at California, where a sixth-place finish in his second race with Roush was the lone high point. Since then, he’s never been better than 16th at the track. But McMurray was never worse than 15th when he drove for Chip Ganassi, his current owner, with an average finish of 7.2 in five starts from 2003-05.