Here's a look at the top five in points and five drivers to watch in Sunday's Shelby 427. All statistical references are for Sprint Cup races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway unless otherwise indicated. Driver rating is based on the past four races at the track.
1. Matt Kenseth, 107.8 driver rating. No NASCAR driver has won the first three races of a season. Can Kenseth do it? Absolutely. Vegas is his kind of track. In nine races he has four top fives, including wins in 2003 and 2004. And Roush Fenway teammate Carl Edwards won last year's race.
2. Jeff Gordon, 111.4. Gordon's run of three consecutive top-five finishes ended last year with a wicked crash with five laps to go while he was running among the leaders. He finished 35th with his second DNF in 11 races. He has one win among his five top fives. Gordon finished second last week and said immediately after Sunday's race how much he was looking forward to Las Vegas.
3. Kurt Busch, 89.9. Busch also crashed out of last year's race, exiting 12 laps before Gordon. Busch is an excellent qualifier, with a 6.1 average start in 10 races (none worse than 10th) but has been unable to turn those into solid finishes. He has two top 10s in eight starts with finishes of 16th, 26th and 38th in the past three. His overall average finish is 20.1.
4. Tony Stewart, 92.9. Stewart turned 107 laps last year before crashing and finishing last. Between last year's 43rd and a 36th in 1999, his rookie season, Stewart has six top 10s in eight races but no wins.
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5. Greg Biffle, 100.2. Biffle finished third last year for his third top 10 in five starts. The most important factor for Biffle this week is putting last week's pit-road blunder out of his mind. Biffle, and all Roush cars for that matter, run well on intermediate tracks, and although Biffle is winless at Vegas, eight of his 14 career Cup wins have come on 1.5-mile or 2-mile tracks.
5 to watch:
9. Carl Edwards, 92.3. After Edwards won the race last year, he was penalized 100 points and crew chief Bob Osborne got the boot for six races because of a rules violation. The win was Edwards' second top 10 in four races. His team is looking forward to the return to Vegas. Osborne: "I think Las Vegas is the perfect track to gain some Chase points and get a win."
18. Kyle Busch, 109.8. Neither of the Las Vegas-bred Busch boys has a victory at the track, but Kyle has the better record with three top 10s in five races. He made his Cup debut in this race in 2004, crashed after 11 laps and finished 41st. In the four races since, his average finish is 6.3.
19. Jimmie Johnson, 112.0. After winning three Vegas races in a row, Johnson turned in a miserable performance last year and finished 29th. He even qualified poorly, starting 33rd. Team 48 struggled the entire weekend. Johnson is off to a slow start and needs to follow-up last week's top 10 with another.
31. Jeff Burton, 95.4. Burton has seven top 10s in 11 starts, including wins in 1999 and 2000 when he raced for Jack Roush. Burton is off to a terrible start--finishes of 28th and 32nd in the first two weeks--and needs a top-10 finish in a big way. Last year he finished fifth.
35. Dale Earnhardt Jr., 77.2. Speaking of terrible starts ... what is going on in the No. 88 camp? At Daytona it was pit woes (and then touching off a 10-car pileup); last week it was a blown engine. If Junior doesn't pick up his game, instead of fighting for a place in the Chase, he'll be fighting for a place in the top 35 in owner points. He is but 33 points ahead of 40th-place Regan Smith--and Smith has run one fewer race than Junior. Earnhardt has finished second twice at Vegas, including last year.
