The Xfinity Series will join the Cup and Truck Series at Bristol Motor Speedway this weekend. This is the last race for the Xfinity Series before their playoffs begin next week at Texas. Noah Gragson, Ty Gibbs, Justin Allgaier, AJ Allmendinger, Josh Berry, Austin Hill Brandon Jones and Jeremy Clements are locked into the playoffs because they have a win this year. Sam Mayer and Riley Herbst are locked into the playoffs on points. This means there are only two spots left. It should be fun to see the series “Where names are made” battle it out to set their playoff field. The Food City 300 can be seen Friday at 7:30 p.m. ET on USA Network.
XFINITY SERIES PRACTICE AT BRISTOL
The Xfinity 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 Food City 300 at Bristol. The track is a half-mile, high-speed track, so the drivers had 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 DraftKings 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…
STRATEGY FOR BRISTOL
The race at the Bristol is scheduled for 300 laps (160 miles). That means there are 75 points available for leading laps and 135 points available for leading laps (210 dominator points). That is a lot of dominator points and we must chase them.
The trend at Bristol is for one driver to lead roughly 100 laps and score 32 fastest laps (39.4 dominator points). Two other drivers lead roughly 70 laps and scores 38 fastest laps (34.6 dominator points). Passing the leader has been tough at Bristol and I expect it will be the same Friday night We must pay up for the drivers who will have the best chance to lead the most laps this week. 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: Ty Gibbs, Justin Allgaier, Josh Berry and Noah Gragson
DRIVER RANKINGS FOR BRISTOL
CORE DRIVERS FOR BRISTOL
TOP-TIER DRIVERS: Ty Gibbs ($11,400), Noah Gragson ($11,200), Justin Allgaier ($11,000), Josh Berry ($10,600), AJ Allmendinger ($10,300), Brandon Jones ($10,000), Sam Mayer ($9,700), Austin Hill ($9,500), Sammy Smith ($9,200), Sheldon Creed ($9,000)
VALUE DRIVERS: Riley Herbst ($8,500), Landon Cassill ($8,200), Ryan Sieg ($7,900), Jeffrey Earnhardt ($7,200), Alex Labbe ($7,000), Sage Karam ($6,800), Josh Williams ($6,700), JJ Yeley ($6,500), Kyle Weatherman ($6,200), Nicholas Sanchez ($6,100), Joe Graf Jr. ($6,000)
PUNT PLAYS: Kris Wright ($5,700), CJ McLaughlin ($5,300), David Starr ($5,100), BJ McLeod ($5,000), Ronnie Bassett Jr. ($4,600), Bobby McCarty ($4,500)
DRAFTKINGS CASH CONTEST LINEUP
DRAFTKINGS TOURNAMENT CONTEST LINEUP
Good Luck Friday Night!
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