Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Richmond Preview: Penske Racing will be tough to beat

This Saturday night at Richmond, Virgina, the old Capital of the Confederacy, we’ve got a wild card race for one entry into NASCAR's playoffs -- the Sprint Cup Chase. There are already 15 drivers (14 officially) that have clinched one of the 16 positions for the 10-race Chase, and 15 more drivers are eligible to get in by simply winning Saturday night.

For three drivers, they have a good shot at getting in by points if none of the 15 candidates vying to make it don’t win. Greg Biffle is currently in 16th-place with a 23-point lead over Clint Bowyer and a 24-point lead over rookie Kyle Larson. Realistically, there are probably nine drivers among the wild cards that could win, and that‘s stretching it.

Because you have so many desperate drivers out there, you can expect a few to make some daring and bold moves, which makes the chance of betting one of the really good drivers -- that have the best chance at winning Saturday -- more prone to be involved in a wreck.

The first thing I like to do before all Richmond races is look at what happened in the first race (Apr. 6) and then refer to similar tracks like Phoenix (Mar. 2) and New Hampshire (July 26). None of those three tracks look alike, but all three are flat with similar layouts less a mile or less. If a driver does well on one, they usually do well on the other.

Kevin Harvick won at Phoenix, Joey Logano won at Richmond and Brad Keselowski won at New Hampshire. In all but Logano’s case, those drivers led the most laps. Jeff Gordon led 173 laps in the first Richmond race until giving the lead up with 38 laps to go. Gordon would eventually finish second. He also finished fifth at Phoenix. Surprisingly, Gordon only has two wins at Richmond, the last coming in 2000.

The obvious theme between all three is the success of the Penke Racing Fords that claim two of the wins. Keselowski has finished no worse than fourth in any of the three races and is probably the best candidate to win for the first time on this track.

Read More Here.......Top-5 Finish Prediction

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