Last week’s Aaron’s 499 lived up to its billing; not only was the finishing order in question from the drop of the green, but nearly every lap was up for grabs. In a race that featured records for 88 lead changes and 29 different leaders, no one led more than nine circuits until the very end of the show when Jeff Burton and then Jamie McMurray established a beachhead in the front of the field.

Even then, the finish was still far from decided as McMurray and his teammate Juan Montoya were running on fumes and had to survive 12 extra laps and three green-white-checkered restarts to claim their top-fives.

Kevin Harvick won the last-lap battle and swept across the finish line by the eighth-closest margin of victory since the advent of electronic scoring and no one could say the fans didn’t get their money’s worth. With multi-car accidents in four cautions at the end of the race that eliminated more than a dozen cars and marquee drivers such as Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Burton and Ryan Newman from contention, your lineup probably took a beating.

There might not be a huge reprieve coming your way this week either — short tracks can be just as treacherous as restrictor-plate superspeedways. Fortunately, someone forgot to tell Richmond International Raceway that it was a short track.

This .75-mile speedway might be NASCAR’s perfect track. With wide corners and a smooth racing surface, drivers can avoid trouble, but they cannot get away from one another. The competition will be just as close as it was last week at Talladega, but you probably won’t see your lineup decimated by the Big One.

The Favorites

When Denny Hamlin left Martinsville several weeks ago, there were a lot of questions about his immediate future. Pending surgery for a torn ACL caused fantasy owners to be a little conservative at Phoenix because they did not know how he would perform. That turned out to be the right decision — but for the wrong reason. Hamlin lost a lap early in the race and was never able to regain it, but that did not detract from his performance. A week later, he was back in Victory Lane at Texas and the question marks disappeared. You can handicap him by the numbers this week and that means he’ll top the list on a short track. Hamlin has won three of the past four contests on courses less than a mile in length and he’s always at his best in front of the hometown crowd.

Jeff Gordon may be experiencing one of the most frustrating months of his career after losing two races in the closing laps at Martinsville and Phoenix before getting caught up in accidents at Texas and Talladega. He’s had one of the strongest cars in the field each time, however, and it’s hard to imagine that his luck will stay this bad forever. He’s great on the short tracks and he’s great at Richmond. In fact, he enters the weekend with a six-race streak of top-10s that is unparalleled by any other active driver.

If not for a single bad race in this event last year, Kevin Harvick would lay claim to the longest top-10 streak. Mechanical issues sent him behind the wall for six laps last May, but that is the only time in the past five years he has failed to finished 10th or better at Richmond. He hasn’t had a top-five since he won the fall 2006 Chevy Rock & Roll 400, but coming off last week’s win at ‘Dega, he’s got momentum on his side that hasn’t been there during his past 115 attempts.

Dark Horses

Brad Keselowski is knocking on the door of a top-10 on the short tracks. To succeed on the bullrings, a driver has to be aggressive in traffic — and the same personality trait that gets him into trouble on the unrestricted, intermediate speedways will be his salvation this week. At Bristol, he finished 13th and he followed that with a 12th at Martinsville, which means he keeps heading in the right direction.

We would have a little more faith in Kyle Busch if he had not looked so lackluster at Martinsville earlier this season, but the same thing happened to him last year. After winning at Bristol in the first short track race of 2009, he stumbled outside the top 20 on the Virginia bullring, but immediately redeemed himself with back-to-back victories at Richmond and Bristol in the fall. A fifth at Richmond last fall and a fourth at Martinsville later that year made him all but perfect on the short tracks. This year, he started with a ninth at Bristol, but he should be able to improve on that this week.

Underdogs

A little luck goes a long way in NASCAR and for the moment, Sam Hornish Jr. seems to have it. He was involved in both the Lap 83 crash that damaged 10 cars and later in the Lap 188 accident that crumpled another nine — sending most of them behind the wall. The No. 77 kept running, however, and Hornish earned a respectable 24th-place finish by clinging precariously to the lead lap. That’s his fourth consecutive top-25 this year and at his level, it makes him a great value. Hornish was remarkable at Richmond in 2009; in fact, he swept the top 10, which is something only a handful of racers can say.

Along with Kyle Busch, Gordon, Mark Martin and Hornish, the only other driver to score top-10s in both 2009 Richmond races was Ryan Newman. This track tends to reward former open wheel racers because they have been trained to storm to the front, run away, and hide. Tony Stewart and Kasey Kahne have both visited Victory Lane at RIR and Newman also wrote his name in the Richmond record book in fall 2003. Following his win, he was hit-and-miss with every other result ending outside the top 10, but nearly all of his struggles came during the fall. In the spring, he has a six-race top-10 streak to protect.