2010 NASCAR Price Chopper 400 Picks & Predictions
By Anthony Rome
NASCAR heads to the heartland of America on Sunday for the Price Chopper 400 at Kansas Speedway.
This is stop number three in NASCAR's Chase for the Sprint Cup championship, which could very well be a make or break race for the drivers near the bottom of the standings.
The drivers bringing up the rear in the chase standings have failed to close ground after two races and they can't afford to let the leaders pull away any more. So look for them to gamble a bit more with pit strategy to gain track position, as well as fuel mileage.
Jeff Gordon 7/1
Only two drivers have multiple wins at Kansas and Jeff Gordon is one of them. In nine starts here, he’s only finished outside of the top-10 twice, with one of those finishes due to mechanical failure. When you look back this year, Gordon has performed much better on this type of track compared to other tracks and this should be the week he breaks out of the year long slump he has been in.
Tony Stewart 12/1
Tony Stewart is the other driver with multiple wins at Kansas and if you look at tracks similar to this one you will see he does well at those as well. Stewart's history here is much like Gordon's but he has three finishes outside the top 10 and a higher average finish of 13.2 due to two bad finishes. After two bad finishes to start the chase, we look for Stewart to bounce back this week and get back in the chase for the championship.
Live Longshot
Kasey Kahne 30/1
Kasey Kahne has always excelled on cookie cutter tracks like Kansas but one reason or another he has only two top 10s here. Even though he will be gone next year, he hasn't thrown in the towel this season and has shown some strong runs the last few weeks. With nothing to lose since he isn't in this year’s chase and leaving the team at the end of this year, we think he will let it all hang out and gamble if need be to get the win.
I'm running out of fantasy drivers for the rest of the season. I wanted to use Kahne here but I burned him up 4 races ago. I'm second and first in my leagues and I am not sure if I got enough of the guys I want to use left to win either one 🙁