No preview of Watkins Glen would be complete without a mention to keep an eye on some of the top road-course specialists. For Robby Gordon this race is his best opportunity to bring a highlight to a season with only one top-10 result and a fair share of controversy after last weekend's Busch Series road-course race in Montreal. In his eight Cup starts at Watkins Glen Gordon has a win (2003), six top-fives and six top-10s.

Other "roadies" looking to score solid finishes include P.J. Jones, Ron Fellows, and Boris Said if he competes. 

My darkhorse is super sophomore Denny Hamlin, who has a road-course win in the Busch Series, and will be helped a great deal by the experience his crew chief Mike Ford provides. He'll also have the benefit of having run well so far in COT races.

Keys to success at Watkins Glen
Winning this 90-lap race isn't easy, and it helps a lot if a driver gets a bit of good luck, especially when it comes to fuel mileage.

The twists and turns of the track's 2.45-mile layout prove challenging and put a car's equipment to the test. Drivers know that to win at Watkins Glen they need top performances by their crew and from the motor that came from their engine builder.

Racing a road course is so much a mechanical exercise requiring numerous shifts per lap as well as constant braking. At the same time a driver is trying to race the track, he's also trying to figure out how to pass the car in front of him, and how to keep the car in back of him from passing him.

That's why some drivers like Tony Stewart find the two road courses on the Cup circuit to be refreshing breaks from the world of oval-track racing. But other drivers absolutely despise racing at Infineon and Watkins Glen.

It's tough to pass at Watkins Glen and the best places to try to do so are at the course's braking points. Turn 1, which is a downhill, right-hand corner coming off the frontstretch, is a great place to attempt to overtake another car, but it's also where there tends to be the most contact between cars. The track has removed the sand pit at the end of Turn 1 and replaced it with an asphalt strip.

Drivers who can quickly negotiate the backstretch's "inner loop" -- a U-shaped section of four short turns -- will likely turn the fastest laps since this is the course's most challenging stretch.

We could see various fuel-mileage strategies employed as most teams can run 30-35 laps on a tank of fuel. The ideal way to run this 90-lap race is with just two pit stops, taking the second of those as soon as a team gets within its fuel window to finish the race.

If a team can be the first to pit in the final series of stops, it might catch a break if a caution then comes out forcing the other cars to pit under yellow.

With the COT all eyes will be on the front splitter and whether it will prove fragile on the aggressive curves of this road course. Fragility in the front splitter could cause problems for drivers since if these splitters give way they could cut tires on other cars in the race.

This road course presents the drivers with a complex test of racing. If a car is running well, this is a race where a driver's talents can really make a difference. And history shows that a good starting position can prove invaluable when it comes to boosting a driver's shot at winning the race.

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