Happy 4th of July and happy 250th birthday to the greatest country on the planet!
The O’Reilly Series will join the Cup Series at Chicagoland Speedway on the 4th of July. The O’Reilly Series last races at Chicagoland Speedway in 2019. This is an old worn out track that eats up tires quickly. Will the young O’Reilly Series drivers have the patients to manage their tire wear in order to run up front at the end of the race? It should be fun to see how it all plays out. The Chicagoland 300 can be seen Saturday at 5:30 p.m. ET on CW Channel.
FANTASY STATS FOR CHICAGOLAND SPEEDWAY
We do not have any stats from Chicagoland Speedway to work with this week, so will have to rely on the stats from the other 1.5-mile, intermediate tracks this year. The O’Reilly Series raced at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Kansas Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway this year. I used the stats from these four races to help handicap the O’Reilly Series race on the 4th of July.
Here are the stats from the races on the 1.5-mile, intermediate tracks this year, sorted by DraftKings Points….
PRACTICE / QUALIFYING
The O’Reilly Series had their practice scheduled for Friday afternoon, but it was canceled because of rain. NASCAR wanted to give the teams some time to shake down their cars for today’s race, so they replaced the qualifying session scheduled for Saturday afternoon and replaced it with a 50-minute practice session. The starting lineup was set “per the NASCAR rulebook.”
Here are the O’Reilly Series practice speeds at Chicagoland Speedway….
DRIVER RANKINGS FOR CHICAGOLAND
* Justin Allgaier and Brandon Jones tested at Chicagoland Speedway in April. I gave these two drivers a bump in the rankings since they should have a good idea of how the tires will wear throughout the race.
STRATEGY FOR CHICAGOLAND
The race Saturday is scheduled for 200 laps (300 miles). That means there are 50 points available for leading laps and 90 points available for fastest laps (140 dominator points). I looked at the four races on the 1.5-mile, intermediate tracks to see how the dominator points played out. The top dominator lead 70 laps, the second-dominator leads 50 laps, the third dominator leads 44 laps and the last dominator leads 22 laps. I plan to pay up for three drivers who I think can lead some laps and finish up front and pair them with three drivers who can score some place differential points.
DRAFTKINGS CASH LINEUP
DRAFTKINGS TOURNAMENT LINEUP
Good Luck Saturday!
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