The Xfinity Series will join the Cup Series at Martinsville Raceway this weekend. This is the last race in the Round of 8 and the last chance for a driver to secure a spot in the Championship Four next week at Phoenix. Noah Gragson and Josh Berry have punched their tickets to Phoenix with their wins in the Round of 8. There are two spots left. Ty Gibbs, AJ Allmendinger, Justin Allgaier, Sam Mayer, Brandon Jones and Austin Hill will compete for those two spots. It should be fun to watch the drivers beat and bang on each other to advance this week. The Dead on Tools 250 can be seen Saturday at 3 pm ET on NBC.
XFINITY SERIES PRACTICE / QUALIFYING
The Xfinity Series had its regular schedule this week at Martinsville Raceway. The teams had 20 minutes of practice to dial in their cars and then they qualified for the Dead on Tools 250. Practice speeds typically do not translate to race speed much at Martinsville because most drivers will not be able to get the most out of their cars in the race because they will be stuck in traffic. They will not have “clean air” like they had in practice. What does matter at Martinsville is track position. I gave a bump in the rankings to the drivers who qualified up front and have the premium pit stalls at the tight pit road at Martinsville.
Here are the practice speeds from Friday’s practice at Martinsville…
DRAFTKINGS POINTS ON FLAT TRACKS (2022)
Martinsville is a unique track. It is a half-mile, paper-clip shaped track that takes a car that can rotate freely through the tight corners in order to post fast laps. Drivers also have to be aggressive to make their own hole in order to move through the field. I looked at the data from the last race at Martinsville, but I also added in the stats from the races at Richmond and New Hampshire. It takes a similar setup to navigate those tracks.
Here are the average DraftKings Points on the short, flat tracks in 2022….
STRATEGY FOR MARTINSVILLE
The race Saturday is scheduled for 250 laps. That is only half the length of the Cup Series race, but it is still a lot of laps and a lot of dominator points. There are 62.5 points available for leading laps and 112.5 points available for fastest laps (175 dominator points).
The trend at Martinsville is for one driver to lead roughly 160 laps and score 80 fastest laps (76 dominator points). A second driver leads roughly 60 laps and scores 30 fastest laps (28.5 dominator points). We will not win our contests this week if we do not have the top dominator in our lineups.
My strategy Saturday is to build “stars and scrubs” lineup. I want as many potation dominators as possible. It really doesn’t matter what our cheap drivers do as long as we have the top to dominators and score the 105 dominator points they will likely score.
The drivers who have the best chance to score the most dominator points Saturday include: Brandon Jones, Ty Gibbs and Noah Gragson
DRIVER RANKINGS FOR MARTINSVILLE
CORE DRIVERS FOR MARTINSVILLE
TOP-TIER DRIVERS: Noah Gragson ($11,500), Ty Gibbs ($11,200), AJ Allmendinger ($10,900), Josh Berry ($10,600), Brandon Jones ($10,100), Sam Mayer ($9,700), Austin Hill ($9,500)
VALUE DRIVERS: Landon Cassill ($8,600), Daniel Hemric ($8,500), Ryan Sieg ($8,200), Kyle Weatherman ($6,900), Brandon Brown ($6,700), Alex Labbe ($6,400), Kris Wright ($6,000)
PUNT PLAYS: J.J. Yeley ($5,800), Josh Williams ($5,500), Blaine Perkins ($5,300), Ryan Vargas ($5,000), Masson Massey ($4,800)
DRAFTKINGS CASH CONTEST LINEUP
DRAFTKINGS TOURNAMENT CONTEST LINEUP
Good Luck This Weekend!
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