Matt Kenseth is seeking his third straight win in this event, but Victory Lane might not be in the cards since it should take a bit of time this season before the Roush Fenway Racing driver and his new crew chief, Chip Bolin, get everything sorted out. What helps is that Bolin moves into his new role after a lengthy stint as the car chief of Kenseth’s No. 17 Ford. Also when Kenseth won at California last year his then crew chief Robbie Reiser was serving a suspension from NASCAR and Bolin successfully subbed for him.

Daytona 500 winner Newman has not had a great recent past at California, where his average finish over the last five races is 24.4, but the opposite is true for Carl Edwards, who has six finishes of sixth or better in seven California starts.

My darkhorse is the least famous of the quartet of Hendrick Motorsports drivers, Casey Mears, who finished a disappointing 35th at Daytona. It’s time for Mears to put forth a strong showing. This is his second season with HMS and he wants to avoid a slow start like the one he experienced last year.

Keys to success at California
It's a flat track that's super smooth, wide and multi-grooved. These characteristics make passing a lot easier at this venue than at other tracks on the Sprint Cup circuit.

As the track, which hosted its first Cup race in 1997, has seasoned, it has become more and more of a multi-groove layout. That creates opportunities for drivers to try different grooves in their attempts to pass other cars.

A driver has to be extremely good to run the bottom for the entire 500 miles, but as the race goes on the groove that's best to run should move towards the top of the track. The optimum groove changes. Whatever works for 200 miles might not work for the next 200 miles. Adapting to the changing groove is critical.

Aero push is important as drivers want the front end of their car to be as close to the track as possible, thus making the car fast. If a driver's car is handling well, this is a track where it's certainly fun to watch him race.

Also, the pit area is wide open with plenty of room for each of the pit stalls, and it has two acceleration lanes from which to exit. So there is really nothing about pitting at California Speedway that should cause time to be lost on a pit stop.

Drivers just have to watch not to speed entering pit road. Their total focus has to be on how fast they are going entering the pits so they don't get hit with a penalty by NASCAR.

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