The MENCS will compete at New Hampshire Motor Speedway Saturday Sunday. This will be the fourth race at the short-flat track (Phoenix, Martinsville and Richmond are the others) and there are some drivers who excel at managing their tires at these tracks. It will be important to take the flat-track specialist on our team this week.
Strategy for the Magic Mile
We need to decide what strategy we feel most comfortable using this week. There are two strategies we can use to select our teams and each has a good chance of scoring well.
Strategy 1: Slingshot Fantasy Auto Racing Contest awards 20 bonus points if you have the winning driver in your lineup and this is the perfect week to chase these bonus points. Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. led 531 of the 601 laps run at the Magic Mile last year. Selecting both of these drivers for our team this week will give us a great chance to score the 20 bonus points for winning the race. The problem with this strategy is that Busch or Truex MUST win the race or we are in trouble. Also we will have to sacrifice salary to select our 3 remaining drivers. We could still put a good lineup together by using: Kyle Busch, Martin Truex Jr., Joey Logano, Matt Kenseth and Kasey Kahne.
Strategy 2: Slingshot Fantasy Auto Racing Contest also awards 2 points per position gained in the race over where the driver started the race. The safer strategy is to select one driver who has a good chance to win and 4 drivers who start outside the top 10 and have a good chance to score position differential points. My lineup for Strategy 2 would be: Martin Truex Jr. (Pick to win), Kevin Harvick, Joey Logano, Matt Kenseth and Kasey Kahne.
I am running the Strategy 2 lineup. I really like what I saw from Martin Truex Jr., Kevin Harvick and Joey Logano in practice. Truex and Harvick should have a good chance to win and Logano should easily move into the top 10 from his 19th starting spot. Matt Kenseth and Kasey Kahne are two veterans who looked a lot faster than where they qualified. I will trust them to move up 8-10 spots Sunday.
Here are the rest of my picks for the New Hampshire….
Kevin Harvick ($12,000) (Starts 14th)
Martin Truex Jr. ($12,100) (Starts 2nd)
Joey Logano ($10,700) (Starts 19th)
Matt Kenseth ($8,000) (Starts 31st)
Kasey Kahne ($7,000) (Starts 26th)
Good luck this week!
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