Veteran Jeff Burton likely won’t have the car to win at Pocono but he could have another good day in the No. 31 Chevrolet of Richard Childress Racing, which is second in points. Burton hasn’t won in 28 starts at Pocono but he’s finished no worse than 13th in his last four races at this layout.

After a third-place result in this event last year, Martin Truex Jr. feels good about racing at Pocono, where in a recent test he had one of the fastest cars.

Jeff Gordon is the defending champion of this event and in his career has fared well enough at Pocono to have won close to $3 million at the track – the most among drivers.

My darkhorse is Dave Blaney, who has been running well over the last few races and who has a ton of experience at Pocono.

Keys to success at Pocono
Pocono's 2.5 miles make up a layout that is triangular in shape. The front straight is 3,740 feet long and leads to Turn 1, where the banking is 14 degrees. But Turn 2 is banked at only eight degrees and Turn 3 at only six degrees. So besides having just three turns instead of the usual four, Pocono has those turns differing from each other to the point where there is no perfect setup for the cars. Racing successfully at this track is all about compromise on the setup.

It's a venue that the drivers enjoy because winning at Pocono depends on how well they are able to adjust to the different corners and also on which driver can get the most out of his car given the compromises needed to succeed.

At Pocono the driver is as important to winning as he is at any other track on the Sprint Cup circuit. Running 500 miles at this track is hard on the engines and hard on the brakes.

It used to be that teams were concerned over left-front tires going flat at Pocono but with changes made to rumble strips and changes made to the tires by Goodyear this issue has pretty much ceased to exist.

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A driver doesn't want to run out of gas at Pocono because if he runs dry at the start-finish line, he can't coast all the way into the pits. It's just too long. Because fuel mileage can become a crucial factor in this race it puts extra pressure on crew chiefs to make sure they don't leave their car out that one extra lap where it runs out of gas on the frontstretch and can't coast back around. If crew chief miscalculate fuel mileage – even by half a lap – this long track will make them pay dearly for that miscalculation.

Overall, Pocono Raceway presents one of the most difficult challenges Cup drivers face as it's part superspeedway and part road course.

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