Hello Army, and welcome to my VIP breakdown article for the NASCAR weekend at Pocono! I have a lot to go over this weekend, so you may want to grab a snack, but I promise it will all be worth it. If you have any questions be sure to hit me up in Slack so we can discuss them.
This article will be a little different than usual. We’ve only raced here twice in the Xfinity series, so there isn’t much Pocono data we can use there. Also, because of how important strategy is here, I’m going to focus more on lineup construction/correlation and what to look for in your driver research. Let’s get to it!
WARNING: Unfortunately we have some potentially significant weather concerns this week, so we need to be sure to keep an eye on things. Because weather can always change, I won’t be addressing it or giving any advice on how we can leverage it here. Rather, I’ll do this article assuming we race as usual, and we’ll keep any weather-related strategy talk to Slack.
Pocono Raceway
Ah, good ‘ol Pocono! As I’ve said numerous times, I love this track. Pocono is basically Indianapolis, Michigan/Auto Club, Talladega, and Phoenix all rolled into one. It’s a big, wide, flat super-speedway with lots of speed, but it also has a “skill check” for the drivers, meaning that they can’t simply just mash the gas and go fast to win. Each of its three turns are very different from one another and the drivers will be constantly shifting gears all throughout the race. It may not be as long as last week’s race, but it can still be very taxing on the drivers. If they aren’t on their game, they can easily destroy a transmission and end their day early.
Driver research
Because of its uniqueness, certain drivers will fare much better this week than others. Obviously we want drivers who perform well here, but we can also look at who does well at the (non-plate) super-speedways, short flat tracks, and road courses. Yes, we can look at road course history to help figure out who has an edge at a super-speedway. This is why I love Pocono!
Raw horsepower is also very important, so we’ll want to look at those who have been in the better cars this year picking up fastest laps. We can count on them to be able to keep up with the leader and avoid getting lapped. We can ignore fastest laps at plate races though, as different physics come into play there.
Speaking of speed, this track has the same drop-off (in the field) that Auto Club has. While driver skill is very important here, so is how fast your car can go. Those that fall off the pace quickly simply won’t have any way to make up that time and will go down laps in big groups with other slow cars. Because there aren’t a ton of cautions here, these drivers will be racing one another to try and get their laps back, and will just be trapped deep in the field with each other.
Lineup construction
All of this, combined with the fact that these races don’t have many laps (less dominator FP), means that the key to Pocono is putting more emphasis on a balanced lineup with as many drivers who can finish strongly as possible. Loading up on stars & scrubs (punts) is not necessary here. For one, we don’t need to pay up for multiple dominators. Also, because this track has a built-in skill equalizer, there will be plenty of drivers finishing strongly who aren’t among the most expensive in the field.
Remember how Daniel Suarez started 7th, finished 3rd, and got us 46.5 DKFP for $7,100 at Dover a few weeks ago? Those are the types of plays we need to find this week!
Unless there’s a huge wreck and a large portion of the field DNF’s, scrubs simply don’t perform well here and should be passed in favor of faster options. If one of the average (or worse) cars manages to qualify too high (like when McDowell started 11th here last year), they are absolute fades this week. There’s no need to get cute with those types here, not even in GPP. They can keep themselves up high at a short track where they can out-skill other drivers, but they need both skill AND horsepower here.
However, as the cautions can be bigger (almost like a plate race, but not quite as bad), any wreck can take out a lot of cars (see what happened here last year on lap one). This means that while much less unlikely, it’s always possible that a stars & scrubs or max place differential lineup can win the day. I won’t fault anyone for taking a few shots with lineups like that, but I’d still recommend keeping them to a minimum. I’ll probably only spend about 5-10% of my 150 lineups for setups like that; the rest will all be balanced.
Unless we have some studs or higher-tier drivers starting deep in the field, place differential is not a primary concern here. Think back to the basics here; pay up a little for a value play that can finish 20th or better over the scrub who will start and finish in the 30s. This is not a high scoring race like a 400-lap shootout, so we need to make sure our cheaper drivers have a solid floor to help push us passed other lineups that aren’t properly constructed (yes, even in GPP). Paying up for multiple studs here isn’t doing much for us when there just isn’t anything to gain by stacking them. Remember: balanced is good!
Refer back to my dominators & studs VIP article for more information about this. Pocono is one of the tracks I had in mind when I made the “Lineup A vs Lineup B” section, so please read through it for some more insight on why balanced is important this week! Also, keep in mind that the example there is with 290 laps. We have far fewer laps this week, which would make the gap between those two lineups even greater.
Now that we have an idea of how to build, let’s get to the usual stuff, starting with the Xfinity race!
Xfinity Pocono Green 250
With the exception of road courses, Pocono has the fewest number of laps of any race this season. This will be a low-scoring race so it will be extremely important to get the bigger chunks of DKFP with finishing position. Like I mentioned before, place differential won’t be very important, especially in Xfinity since half of the field is significantly slower than the rest. Other than studs starting in the back, this week is all about finishing position and having a single dominator grab as much of the dominator DKFP as possible. If you happen to have somebody who winds up being a secondary dominator, that’s a nice bonus. Don’t try and predict who it’s going to be though, focus on finishing position instead.
In the Xfinity preview article I mentioned having to make a decision on Kyle Busch. We’ll need to know where he qualifies to make that decision, but there are only two scenarios where we’d want him. We need him to either qualify in the back or dominate the majority of the race, with a top-5 finish in both cases (preferably a win). Those are the ONLY two ways he pays off his salary this week. If you think he can do either of these, play him. If you think somebody else dominates AND he doesn’t start in the back, fade him. Keep this in the back of your mind as we approach qualifying, and we can all discuss it in Slack after we know where we stand. As we’ve seen, these expensive studs aren’t going heavily owned, so there’s always been an edge to take them when they retu
As for everybody else, we’ll want to go after those who are keeping pace, offer fastest laps, and who should be able to finish the highest. We know Christopher Bell is a favorite for all formats, and the worse he qualifies the better. Keep an eye on the other fast cars as well; Justin Allgaier, Cole Custer, Brandon Jones, and Daniel Hemric have been collecting most of the fastest laps of all of the Xfinity regulars, and they should all be considered top-10 cars with top-5 potential. Austin Cindric, Tyler Redick, Michael Annett, and Jeremy Clements can all be considered as well, as they have all shown plenty of speed for their salary.
Paul Menard and Shane Lee will be driving fast cars and should be able to hang out somewhere near the front all day. Chase Elliott seemed to hold his own pretty well in the #23 last week and will look to have a better finish this time around. Elliott Sadler is usually a cash-only play for me, but since everybody else’s ceiling is lower this week, his looks higher than usual in comparison. For that reason, he could make a nice GPP play since he can finish top-5 pretty easily.
My Driver X pick this week – Tommy Joe Martins – looks to be in the best spot of his price range. They probably should have priced him up this week, so that’s good for us that they didn’t. Most of these cheap guys are probably going to finish where they start (or worse), but Martins has a pretty good shot at moving up a bit and returning some value (especially if he starts in the 30’s somewhere).
Remember that place differential isn’t a focal point this week, so don’t be afraid to take somebody who is starting higher than we would normally like. There’s a steep cut-off in the performance of a lot of these cars, so everyone in an average or better car (that can also handle Pocono) automatically has a fairly nice floor.
Monster Energy Pocono 400
Like the Xfinity race, this one also has a very small number of laps. I like the same strategy here as well; take a single dominator and look for strong finishes as your main targets, and take any secondary dominator scoring as a bonus. This is especially true for FanDuel, because as you can see, there’s hardly anything to gain by trying to get those lead laps. Just as before, we don’t need to focus on place differential from the scrubs because it just doesn’t happen for them. Spend up a little to get some of the value plays and build a balanced lineup around it!
Looking at the salaries this week, there are plenty of value options that can make this work. Depending on where they start, Ty Dillon, David Ragan, Michael McDowell, Bubba Wallace, and William Byron are all underpriced and deserve your attention. Especially Byron, as both he and his car are capable of a top-10 finish for a mere $6,300 DK/$7,000 FD. Nobody in his immediate price range on either site can touch his potential floor/ceiling this week.
Moving up from there, pay attention to everybody from Allmendinger up to Bowman, but especially Suarez, McMurray, Menard, A Dillon, Newman, and Kahne. Every single one of these guys are performing well. Suarez/McMurray have top-5 potential, while the others could start deep in the 20s and finish in the top-15. Menard is always underowned, has been improving every race (when he doesn’t get wrecked), and is driving the car that has dominated this race before. While he probably won’t dominate with it, he’s still plenty capable of a somewhat sneaky top-10 finish.
From there it gets really easy; the high-end Fords and the Joe Gibbs cars are the fastest in the field and I would be surprised if they AREN’T representing the majority of the top-10 throughout the entire race. Harvick, Almirola, Bowyer, and Kurt are your SHR guys (especially Kurt, he’s great here). All three Penske guys look great; Logano, Keselowski, and Blaney. For JGR we have Kyle Busch, Daniel Suarez, Erik Jones, and Denny Hamlin (Busch and Hamlin are both great here). Don’t be surprised if 80% of these guys wind up in the top-10. They all deserve to be in your player pool from almost any starting position, as they should all find their way up front (baring any crashes or pit road mishaps).
The higher end Chevy camp isn’t quite there with the rest, but they have been improving. Chase, Johnson, and Larson could make for some interesting GPP pivots, but we’ll have to see how they look throughout the weekend.
All of this of course depends on qualifying, but these are all drivers who come into the weekend looking good. I’ll have my picks sheet up and ready after qualifying, so stay tuned for that. That’s going to do it for now, let’s hope the weather holds out so we can win that money! Have fun with your research and good luck this weekend!