Stewart, Gordon hot picks for fantasy team owners

This week, all eyes will be on two former Brickyard 400 winners -- who happen to have been shut out so far in 2008.

For nearly a decade, Tony Stewart came to Indy with one goal in mind; he wanted to win at the famed Brickyard. In five Indy Racing League starts, he finished in the top 10 three times with a best of fifth in 1997 in his second attempt. He almost found Victory Lane in the 2001 IROC race when he finished second to Bobby Labonte.

Fast facts

What	Allstate 400 at the Brickyard
When	2 p.m. ET Saturday
TV	ESPN, 1 p.m. ET
Radio	MRN (Sirius Ch. 28), 1 ET

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• By the Numbers: Indy

The Sprint Cup series didn't look like it would be much kinder to the Indiana native when he went 0-for-6 at the beginning of his stock-car career and the media hounded him about winning that race much the same way they plagued Dale Earnhardt about his inability to win the Daytona 500.

Just as Earnhardt finally captured the big prize at Daytona International Speedway in 1998, however, Stewart finally found Victory Lane at the Brickyard in 2005. He added another brick to his fireplace mantelpiece last year.

Jeff Gordon didn't wait nearly as long to find Indy's Victory Lane. He won the inaugural Brickyard 400 in a thrilling duel with Ernie Irvan that was cut short when that driver punctured a tire late in the going. Since then, he's added three more victories in 1998, 2001 and 2004.

Between them, Stewart and Gordon have won nearly half of the 14 races contested on this famed oval and those victories were even more special because both drivers spent their formative years as residents of Indiana -- growing up in the shadow of this track.

Both drivers have struggled this season and failed to find Victory Lane but they have a great opportunity to reverse their fortunes this week. Gordon's four victories are twice that of any other driver on this track and his eight top-fives are nearly double the next closest active driver. Stewart has never finished worse than 17th in nine attempts at Indy and his average finish of 7.6 makes this his second-best track in that regard.

Other Favorites
Another former Indy winner -- winless in 2008 -- has nearly as great an opportunity to stack another brick on his mantel. With a worst finish of 19th, Kevin Harvick has never really struggled at Indy and like Stewart, his average finish of 7.7 makes this his second-best track. His best average finish of 7.4 has been earned at Chicagoland Speedway, and he proved that statistic was meaningful last week when he finished fifth in the LifeLock.com 400. Harvick won his Brickyard 400 in 2003 in only his third start, but he came close again in 2006 with a third.

That season, the driver who lead all others to the checkered flag was Jimmie Johnson. If one looks at his Indy record alone, the driver of the No. 48 would not seem to be a good value with an average finish of 23.5 in six starts. Three of his last four races on this track have ended on the hook -- twice with crash damage and once with a blown engine -- but it will pay dividends for fantasy owners to dig a little deeper into his statistics. Since crashing out of this race last year, Johnson has swept the top 10 on the flat tracks of Pocono Raceway, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Phoenix International Raceway and Martinsville Speedway and three of those eight races ended in Victory Lane.

Kyle Busch. Really, nothing more needs to be said about this driver to convince fantasy owners of his worth, but Busch has swept the top 10 in three starts and gotten progressively stronger. A 10th in 2005, a seventh in 2006 and a fourth last year have paved the way to what could become his first Indy victory. So far this season, Busch has beaten the odds to win his first race on the "Too Tough to Tame" Darlington Raceway, his first Coke 600 and his first road-course race.

Matt Kenseth should also be treated as one of this week's favorites. Four of his last six races on this track have ended in top-five finishes and even though he is winless at Indy, he finished second in 2003 and 2006 as well as third in 2005. His average finish during the last six years is 6.3 with a worst result of only 16th, which means the downside of starting him is not very steep.

Dark Horses
Marquee races such as the Brickyard 400 are not usually great places for dark horses to run out front, but ever since Rick Mast won the pole in a Richard Jackson Ford for the inaugural Brickyard 400 -- and Brett Bodine finished second racing for Kenny Bernstein -- this track has been kind to long shots. Last year, Juan Montoya was the friskiest dark horse as he ran with the leaders most of the day and finished second. Lightening is not supposed to strike the same place twice, but the former F1 ace deserves to be watched closely this week because the flat tracks require some of the same skills as a road course and Montoya is a master of those.

Montoya's Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Reed Sorenson crossed the finish line close behind last year. His fifth-place finish in the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard was the only flat-track success for Sorenson last year but he already has a top-10 at New Hampshire this season. With all the struggles at Ganassi, neither of these drivers can be counted as a sure thing, but if they are fast in practice, you might consider them for the final slot on your roster if they fit the available salary cap.

Because of Montoya's success last year, Marcos Ambrose should also be watched closely in his first Indy attempt. He has already failed to qualify once on an oval this year and that came on the similarly flat New Hampshire Motor Speedway, but we suspected all along that the team was using the Lenox Industrial Tools 301 as a test for this weekend.

Mark Martin seems to be returning to his former glory and that is good news at Indy. He ended the inaugural race on this track 20 laps off the pace in 35th, but came back to finish fifth in 1995. That started a five-race streak of finishes sixth or better and he was Gordon's closest competition in 1998. He struggled again for a while from 2000 through 2004, but managed to finish among the top 10 in 2003. His last three efforts have ended in results of seventh, fifth and sixth, respectively, which makes him another great salary cap play.