For the first and last time of 2018 – we head to Atlanta Motor Speedway – the unofficial start of the season! This week will be a welcome return to normalcy after the calamity that is plate racing. If last week was your first dive into DFS Nascar – forget everything. It is a whole different ball game moving forward. It will be a very hectic weekend – the best way to keep up with all this is to get signed up and get exclusive access to our projection model, the domination station lineup optimizer, and most importantly, direct chat room access to some of the sharpest NASCAR minds in the industry. I will be on there all weekend updating everyone on my research. Let’s start our research by taking a high-level look at Atlanta:
Track Length: 1.54 mile quad oval
Race Length: 325 laps, 500.5 miles
Stage 1 & 2: 85 Laps (each)
Final Stage: 155 Laps
Banking/Turn 1 & 2: 24 degrees
Banking/Turn 3 & 4: 24 degrees
Banking/Frontstretch: 5 degrees
Banking/Backstretch: 5 degrees
Frontstretch Length: 2,332 feet
Backstretch Length: 1,800 feet
Pit Road Speed: 45mph
Fuel Window: 50-55 laps
Now – Atlanta is a 1.5 mile track, but Atlanta is much more complex than most of the 1.5 mile tracks on the circuit. The track surface is very old and is a nightmare for tire wear. Think about dragging a rubber ball across a cheese grater, that’s Atlanta in a nutshell. The key to Atlanta is managing the tire wear and certain drivers certainly have a propensity to do that.
Atlanta is going to playout much different than Daytona. Fewer wrecks, bigger skill gap, and less reliance on place differential. There will be 325 laps in this race, which means we have 162.5 FTPS for fast laps, and 81.25 FTPS for laps led. Identifying who will be hoarding the majority of those points will be our primary objective for this weekend. Now it is far too early to start predicting this kind of stuff yet but take note – Kevin Harvick led the most laps the last FOUR years running – including a SMOTHERING 292 laps last year.
We also need to find the winner. There is a chance that the dominator will be the winner – but it is rare at Atlanta, and for good reason. Chances are if you are dominating a race, you are burning up tires and equipment and you are going to falter towards the end of the race – in fact, dominator Kevin Harvick has NEVER won at Atlanta (EDIT: This isn’t true. He won in 2001 – thank you to who pointed that out!). In the last five shows at Atlanta, the laps leader did not win the race.
The next piece of the Atlanta puzzle will be finding place differential drivers with low salaries and an ability to sneak a few laps led and fastest laps. I can’t begin to identify these guys yet, but my early research likes Ty Dillon, Bubba Wallace, William Byron and AJ Allmendinger. Until we have confidence in the new Chevrolet cars – it is hard to pinpoint value. Spend some time with those guys I mentioned though and see what you can find. Lastly, we need to look at the $5000-$6000 drivers and find who is going to get us around 30 FTPS. This will be the hardest part of the weekend. We will revisit this once prices come out.
Atlanta is a management racetrack and raw speed is not gonna cut it on it’s own. Look for drivers with positive late race place differential, low incident exposure and lastly, drivers who have positive restart differential stats. I know this is a very high level article, but it is a place to start. I will dive in with more stats and picks on The Sway Bar this Saturday. Also be on the lookout for a preview podcast Friday night after qualifying. Talk to you all soon.
Top Relevant Drivers:
Kevin Harvick
Truex Jr.
Jimmie Johnson
Kyle Larson
Kurt Busch
Joey Logano
Brad Keselowski
Chase Elliott
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