The NASCAR Cup Series will travel back to Bristol Motor Speedway for one of the best races of the season. The dirt has been removed and now it is time for the drivers to beat and bang their way through traffic on this high-bank, short track. It will be fun to see which driver gets his “Cage Rattled” at the end of the race Saturday night. The Bass Pro Shop NRA Night Race can be seen Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET on USA Network.
PRACTICE SPEEDS AT BRISTOL
The Cup Series had its regular schedule this week. The teams had 20 minutes of practice to dial in their cars and then they qualified for the Bass Pro Shop NRA Night Race at Bristol. The track is a half-mile, high-speed track, so the drivers have no problem making long runs in practice. The tire fall-off is not like what the cars had a Darlington or Kansas, so we can look at the single-lap and 10-lap speed charts for our drivers this week. The drivers who are in the top-10 on both charts are the drivers we will want in our DFS lineups.
Here are the lap times from the practice Friday at Bristol…
AVERAGE DFS POINTS ON HIGH-BANKED TRACKS
Bristol is a driver’s track. Some drivers are better than others at navigating traffic and making their way to the front. Once a driver finds his rhythm, he can score a lot of fast laps at Bristol.
Bristol is a unique track but we can use the data from the races at Darlington and Dover since they have some similarities to Bristol. I looked at the DFS results from those races (I only used the last race at Darlington because I did not want Darlington to get too much weight in the model) and the data from the last two Night Races at Bristol.
Here are the average DFS points on the high-banked short tracks…
DFS STRATEGY FOR BRISTOL
The race at the Bristol is scheduled for 500 laps (266.5 miles). That means there are 125 points available for leading laps and 225 points available for leading laps (350 dominator points). There will be 50 dominator points available in FanDuel Contests. That is a lot of dominator points and we must chase them.
The trend at Bristol is for one driver to lead roughly 175 laps and score 90 fastest laps (84.25 dominator points). A second driver leads roughly 130 laps and scores 60 fastest laps (59.5 dominator points). Passing the leader has been tough at Bristol and I expect it will be the same in the Gen-7 car. We must pay up for the drivers who will have the best chance to lead the most laps Saturday night. Usually these drivers start up front and have a history of running well at Bristol.
The drivers I expect to lead the most laps and be the top dominators in the race include: Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin, Aric Almirola, Christopher Bell and Kevin Harvick
DRAFTKINGS MODEL (PREDICTIONS BASED ON STATS)
Finish = Finishing Points PD = Position Differential Fastest = Fastest Laps Led = Laps Led
* The number in front of the driver is his projected finishing position based on stats.
FANDUEL MODEL (PREDICTIONS BASED ON STATS)
CORE DRIVERS FOR BRISTOL
TOP-TIER DRIVERS: Denny Hamlin ($11,500), Chase Elliott ($11,200), Kyle Larson ($10,800), Kyle Busch ($10,500), Christopher Bell ($10,200), Joey Logano ($9,500),
VALUE DRIVERS: Ryan Blaney ($8,900), William Byron ($8,700), Kevin Harvick ($8,500), Alex Bowman ($8,200), Daniel Suarez ($8,000), Erik Jones ($7,900), Chase Briscoe ($7,600), Austin Cindric ($7,400), Aric Almirola ($7,000), ), Brad Keselowski ($6,400), Michael McDowell ($6,300), AJ Allmendinger ($6,100)
PUNT PLAYS: Cole Custer ($5,900), Harrison Burton ($5,600), Todd Gilliland ($5,500), Corey LaJoie ($5,400)
DRAFTKINGS CASH CONTEST LINEUP
*You are going to need at least two dominators in your Cash Contest lineup. I will use Kyle Larson and Denny Halin as my dominators and Almirola should lead enough laps to return value too. Joey Logano was fast in practice but slipped up in qualifying. The No, 22 car should score some place differential points. Ty Dillon and Corey LaJoie are punt plays who should not hurt the lineup.
DRAFTKINGS TOURNAMENT CONTEST LINEUP
*Track position is always important at Bristol so I am starting the fast cars who start up front. These drivers all posted fast times in practice and most of them have a strong history of running well at Bristol. This is a risky lineup, because we are going to need a chaos-free race for it to work, but I will also build a lineup with some drivers starting further back to hedge my bet.
FANDUEL CASH CONTEST LINEUP
FANDUEL TOURNAMENT CONTEST LINEUP
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