[picapp align=”left” wrap=”true” link=”term=kyle+busch+richmond&iid=8676861″ src=”http://view4.picapp.com/pictures.photo/image/8676861/crown-royal-presents-the/crown-royal-presents-the.jpg?size=500&imageId=8676861″ width=”380″ height=”258″ /]Kyle Busch (Contender) – In eleven career races at Richmond Kyle Busch has only finished outside the top five twice. Earlier this year Busch won from the pole and led a staggering 226 laps. Kyle Busch has the best Richmond average finish in the series (5.5) and over the last eleven races he’s outscored everyone in the series.

Kyle Busch has also backed up his earlier Richmond performance on similar tracks this year. At Phoenix Busch was the driver to beat until a late caution flew (Phoenix Yahoo race chart), and at New Hampshire Kyle Busch was extremely competitive until he had a late incident with Jeff Burton (New Hampshire Yahoo race chart).

Denny Hamlin (Pretender) – Denny has all the good numbers you could possibly want in a fantasy driver this week but he’s been struggling on short flat tracks this year. I’ll give him a free pass for Phoenix because of his surgery but his Richmond and New Hampshire performances were definitely below Denny standards.

At both New Hampshire and Richmond Denny struggled to stay on the lead lap. Here’s his yahoo race chart from Richmond and New Hampshire.

Kevin Harvick (Contender) – Richmond is a very good track for Harvick. In the last eleven Richmond races Harvick’s only finished outside the top ten once. Over the eleven race time span Harvick’s passed more cars than anyone on the track (355) and he’s raced the most laps inside the top fifteen (4,130). Expect Harvick to go all out for the win because he’s already locked in the Chase.

Matt Kenseth (Pretender) – Kenseth is a former Richmond winner (2002) but in recent years things have been bad for the former champ here. In the COT Kenseth has only finished inside the top ten once and that was the first race in the new car. Since then Kenseth’s average finish at Richmond is 26.6.

Jeff Gordon (Contender) -Gordon’s finished in the top ten in every COT race at Richmond. His average finish since 2007 is 5.4. Earlier this year he finished second and led an impressive 114 laps. In the last eleven Richmond races only Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick have led more laps.

Clint Bowyer (Pretender) – Richmond is one of two tracks where Clint Bowyer’s visited victory lane. Overall he’s been very successful at this .75 mile track but what I don’t like is how I predict he’ll run this race. I expect this team to take no chances at all on the track. Every pit stop they do they’ll put on four tires and on the track he’ll happily wave people on by.

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