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Overall, his average finish at the track (2.8) tops the rest of the drivers on the entry list while his worst effort in five career Pocono starts was a drive to sixth place last season’s June race.
Veteran Jeff Burton is still looking for a victory at Pocono after 29 starts. However, the Richard Childress Racing driver has a knack for driving well at this layout. He has six top-fives (including a drive to fifth in this season’s June race) and 14 top-10s.
Three of the last six Pocono wins have come from the pole. Two of them belong to Hamlin, while the other belongs to Kasey Kahne, who led for a race-high 69 laps — including the last 19 — in June after overcoming an early pit-road penalty, which dropped him to 38th place.
One of the drivers passed by Kahne is my darkhorse pick, Brian Vickers, whose run to second in June was his fourth top-five in nine career starts at Pocono, and his best result since joining Red Bull Racing at the start of last season.
Keys to success at Pocono
Pocono's 2.5 miles make up a triangular layout. 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 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.
Drivers used to be concerned about tires wearing out at Pocono. But given that the Car of Tomorrow has already been driven in a race at the track; I expect the Goodyear tires to hold up much better than at last week’s Brickyard race.
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 a crew chief miscalculates 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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