Hello again everyone, and welcome to this week’s NASCAR Xfinity preview brought to you by the DFS Army! I’m your host @nillyJay and you can follow me here on Twitter to see my NASCAR and MLB content, or you can find me in our Slack channels in #nillys-garage-nas-mlb.
New Hampshire Motor Speedway
We continue our summer racing with a 200-lap shootout at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, a short 1-mile flat track. This one is very similar to both Phoenix and Richmond, so anything you find in your research at those tracks will mostly carry over to this week’s race. For now, let’s start with the usual; DKFP by starting position over the last 5 races:
Unsurprisingly, we have another top-heavy race this week. The reasoning behind that is a bit different this week though, and we can look back to the Phoenix article for an explanation:
There are a few key stats that stand out for Phoenix; quality passes, time spent in the top 15, average running position, and positive differential. Because the track is only a mile long, slower cars quickly get lapped during an average green flag run. When the caution comes out, one car will gain a lap while the others start getting locked in place.
As these green/yellow flag cycles repeat, you get cars that are locked down in a staggered formation (for example: -6, -5, -5, -4, -3, -3, -3, -2, -1, -1) instead of having a handful of drivers all a lap or two down (like what happens at bigger/safer tracks). When you have 10 cars all one lap down, they can still race each other to try and get the free pass. When they’re lapped down in a staggered formation, they simply can’t race their way back onto the lead lap; their only hope to gain any spots back is to survive a big wreck.
This holds true here too, so be very careful with the slower cars this week. If you want to take somebody from the back, consider their ability to quickly move up. This track is not forgiving for those who fall behind, and there will be a lot of cheap drivers with extremely limited ceilings.
Monster Energy drivers
Ty Dillon was originally entered in this race, but he will not be participating. Be sure to remove him from your lineups!
Brad Keselowski ($12,800) – Brad K is our lone Monster Energy driver this week, as well as the most expensive. He’s dominated here in the past and will need to do it again to pay off that salary of his. Remember that there are only 200 laps this week, so if you go this route, you’ll want him up front to get the early lead to secure the first chunk of dominator points.
Xfinity drivers
Justin Allgaier ($11,100) – Allgaier has led 490 laps this year, and 409 of them (83.4%) came from short or flat tracks. He’s never dominated here, but he’ll have a pretty good shot at it this week. He’s expensive though, and unless he starts near the back, I would recommend taking him as the sole dominator in any lineups you use him in.
Christopher Bell ($10,900) – Bell has racked up plenty of lead & fast laps at short/flack tracks all season (he dominated at Richmond on his way to a 100 DKFP performance), and I expect more of the same today. You can use him as a dominator or just a stud to rack up fast laps and a top-5 finish because he can pay off his salary either way.
Elliott Sadler ($10,700) – Nothing new here; Sadler hasn’t dominated any races this year, and I don’t see him doing it today. As always, his ceiling is directly tied to his starting position, so be careful with him in tournaments. Feel free to use him in cash though, as he’s a solid option there if you can’t quite pay up for Bell.
Daniel Hemric ($9,900) – Hemric is inching closer and closer to a breakout performance/win, and he’ll have a good shot at it this week with only one Monster Energy stud in the mix. Don’t overlook him as a potential dominator this week, as he’s been one of the best in the field and is very hungry (especially after losing to Bell last week when he felt like he should have been able to win). Speaking of dominating, he led 61 laps at Bristol earlier this year, so he certainly has the capability.
Ryan Preece ($9,200) – Preece joins us again this week and will be in the blazing fast #18 JGR car. He’s dominated here and at similar tracks in the past, and he has a ceiling just as high as anybody else does today. He also has a very solid floor, as he’ll be a top-5 candidate who can quickly rack up some DKFP from fast laps.
Brandon Jones ($8,300) – Yet another possible dominator, Jones came out of nowhere to lead 106 laps at Bristol back in April. He also led 33 at Dover, and while those two tracks aren’t exactly New Hampshire, they’re close enough that we don’t want to overlook him this week. He also tends to qualify a lot worse than he should, which only helps us by giving him a higher floor and ceiling.
Johnny Sauter ($7,800) – Sauter makes his second Xfinity appearance this week in the #23 car, which he drove to a 6th place finish in Dover back in May. There’s a reason they brought him back for New Hampshire, so don’t sleep on this tremendous value play!
Kaz Grala ($7,500) – I was a little worried that we didn’t see Grala last week, but he’s back and is as determined as ever to get out there and try to win a race. He’s been qualifying poorly more frequently recently, which has given him a massive ceiling over several of the last races. If he does it again today, be sure to have some exposure to him.
Michael Annett ($7,300) – Annett has been quietly improving over the last couple of months, finding several top-15 finishes, and has almost snuck into the top-10 on a couple of occasions. He’s performed well here in the past (two top-10s and has never finished worse than 20th), and has a good shot at finding his first top-10 finish of the year today.
Jeremy Clements ($6,600) – Clements is one of those drivers that if he starts deep in the field, we’ll want to have a good amount of exposure to him. He has a pretty easy path to a top-20 finish, but that’s also pretty close to his ceiling here.
David Starr ($5,700) – Starr has turned into a pretty reliable punt, and I really expected to see him over $6,000 today. Alas, he’s still underpriced, and I’ll gladly take a solid play at a reduced price (especially at a track like this where we have a very limited selection).
And that’s going to do it for today! There are still plenty of drivers to touch on, but they will be reserved for my Slack notes after qualifying is finished. If you’re in the DFS Army, you know where to find me, but if you’re not, you should really consider joining up to get access to all of the goodies we have on the inside (such as those more in-depth notes, the research station, and the Domination Station lineup optimizer that includes the Xfinity races).
Also be sure to check out our MLB content coming out today, as well as other goodies like MMA and WNBA. We have lots of notes and research tools available for those sports too, which of course are all included with everything else we do for one low price (use promo code NILLY to drop it by another 10%). Hope to see more of you in our Slack channels soon, but until then, good luck today!