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Getty ImagesHere's a look at the top five drivers in the Sprint Cup Series standings and five drivers to watch in Saturday's Crown Royal Heath Calhoun 400. All statistical references are for Sprint Cup races at Richmond International Raceway unless otherwise indicated. Driver rating is based on the past 10 races at the track.
Top five drivers
Jimmie Johnson, 85.7 driver rating
Johnson either wins at Richmond or finishes outside the top 10 — or so it seems. In 16 starts he has four top 10s: three wins and a second. The three wins have come in his past six starts at the track. The other three finishes, though, were 30th, 36th and 11th.
Kevin Harvick, 113.6
Harvick has a strong record at Richmond: one Cup win and four Nationwide wins. In 18 Cup starts, he has 11 top 10s. His driver rating is second only to Denny Hamlin's. Harvick won Sunday at Talladega and would love to win back-to-back races and again "thank" Shell in victory lane.
Greg Biffle, 86.2
Biffle is winless in 15 starts with five top 10s. All five came in a row from 2004 to 2006. In the six starts since, his average finish is 19.3 with a best finish of 13th last September.
Matt Kenseth, 78.2
Kenseth has one win and nine top 10s in 20 starts. But, like Roush Fenway Racing teammate Biffle, most of his success came earlier in his career. He has no top 10s in his past five starts, with a best finish of 13th last May and an average finish of 25.8 in those five races.
Kyle Busch, 111.5
Busch has had a tremendous amount of success at Richmond. In 10 starts, he has one win among his eight top fives, and his two finishes outside the top five were 20th and 15th. He has been unspectacular but solid all season, and his four top 10s have come in the past five races. He hasn't won a cup race since last August at Bristol. This could be the week.
Five to watch
Dale Earnhardt Jr., 90.9
Junior has three wins at Richmond but has struggled at the track since his last win in 2006, with one top 10 in his past seven starts. Then again, contact with Kyle Busch two years ago with victory in his grasp didn't help Junior's record, either.
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Denny Hamlin, 121.0
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After a second and two thirds — and two other close calls — Hamlin finally got his first Cup win at Richmond last September. He qualifies very well — 4.6 average start — and his average finish, 8.5, isn't too shabby, either. He's a front-runner at Richmond, having led laps in all eight of his starts, including 299 in his win and 381 of the first 382 laps in May 2008 before he blew a tire and finished a disheartening 24th.
Jeff Gordon, 96.0
Gordon has three wins and 22 top 10s in 34 starts and has six straight top 10s at Richmond, but enough of the stats. This is about the first short-track race since Gordon and Hendrick teammate Johnson began mixing it up on the track. They made contact on tracks of 1.5 and 2.6 miles in length. What's to say they won't do the same at three-quarter-mile Richmond?
Clint Bowyer, 92.3
Bowyer's first win came at Richmond in 2008. He was running third when Busch got into Earnhardt, opening the door for Bowyer. "We took advantage of a misfortune," Bowyer said. "It was pretty wild up there — it was bound to happen." So was Bowyer getting his first Cup win. He has four top 10s in eight starts, but that win is his only top five.
Tony Stewart, 102.2
Stewart finished 17th in September to snap a streak of four top fives (three seconds and a fourth). Like Gordon, Smoke has an outstanding record at Richmond with three wins and 15 top 10s in 22 starts. And like Busch, he hasn't won since last year — October at Kansas — and has the goods to win at Richmond.
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Jeremy Lin hit a free throw with 4.9 seconds left to overcome a dreadful second half and lift the New York Knicks to their fifth straight victory, 100-98, over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday night.
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Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.
