The NASCAR Cup Series will travel to the Irish Hills of Michigan to compete at Michigan International Speedway Sunday. This will be the second race for the Gen-7 car on a 2-mile oval track. The last race was way back in February at Auto Club Speedway. The drivers always put on a good show at Michigan since fuel strategy typically comes into play and there are plenty of lanes to find grip. It should be another exciting race as the Cup Series drivers compete for spots in the playoffs, which start next month.
DRIVER RANKINGS FOR MICHIGAN
Michigan International Speedway brings out the best in the Cup Series. Some teams may have been trying out new setups over the summer to prepare for the playoffs. That will not be the case this week. Many of the CEO’s of the OEM’s (manufacturers) show up for this race. Ford, Chevy and Toyota invest a lot of money into their teams because they believe “if you win on Sunday, you sell on Monday.” The Cup Series will have their best cars on the track this weekend to show the OEM’s that their money is well spent.
So how do we handicap this 2-mile D-shaped track? Auto Club Speedway is the sister track to Michigan International Speedway. Both tracks are 2-miles in length, are D-shaped and have almost identical banking. I will use some of the data from the race at Auto Club to help predict what will happen at Michigan. The teams learned a lot about the Gen-7 car since February, so we cannot simply think the results at Auto Club will be the results this week. I will also use the data from the intermediate tracks (1.5-mile ovals) and momentum over the last four races on non-road courses and non-superspeedway tracks. This should give us enough data to help predict the drivers who will be the best for our Fantasy NASCAR lineups Sunday.
Here are my Driver Rankings for the FireKeepers Casino 400…
| Driver |
| 1. Kyle Larson |
| 2. Tyler Reddick |
| 3. Denny Hamlin |
| 4. Ross Chastain |
| 5. Chase Elliott |
| 6. Christopher Bell |
| 7. Kyle Busch |
| 8. Martin Truex Jr. |
| 9. Ryan Blaney |
| 10. Joey Logano |
| 11. Kurt Busch |
| 12. Daniel Suarez |
| 13. Erik Jones |
| 14. William Byron |
| 15. Alex Bowman |
| 16. Kevin Harvick |
| 17. Austin Dillon |
| 18. Aric Almirola |
| 19. Brad Keselowski |
| 20. Chris Buescher |
| 21. Chase Briscoe |
| 22. Bubba Wallace |
| 23. Michael McDowell |
| 24. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. |
| 25. Austin Cindric |
| 26. Harrison Burton |
| 27. Justin Haley |
| 28. Cole Custer |
| 29. Noah Gragson |
| 30. Austin Hill |
| 31. Corey LaJoie |
| 31. Todd Gilliland |
| 32. Ty Dillon |
| 33. Cody Ware |
| 34. Josh Bilicki |
| 35. J.J. Yeley |
| 35. B.J. McLeod |
* These rankings will be updated Saturday after qualifying
Good Luck This Week!
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