Hello again Army, and welcome to this week’s Calming the Chaos! We’re finally back at it again this weekend, with a trip to one of the biggest, baddest, and most chaotic tracks on the circuit. It’s Talladega, baby!
As always, if you haven’t already, be sure to check out my driver list & tools suite, as this article will directly tie into it.
Talladega Superspeedway
First things first: I do not recommend playing cash games at Talladega! Even before all of the unknowns we have entering this race, it’s extremely volatile. There are no “safe” plays here, as EVERYBODY is at risk of getting caught up in a wreck at any random point in the race. For that matter, single entry tournaments are much more difficult as well, so I would recommend focusing on MME this weekend. Quantity is king for us here.
Lineup construction/correlation
With only 188 laps and a chaotic wreck looming at every turn, place differential and finishing position will be king here. This is one of those races where you can get really creative, and where salary cap may or may not matter, depending on how many drivers crash. To be honest, there’s really no right or wrong way to build here, so long as you’re giving yourself a high ceiling. If you leave $1,000 on the table, that’s perfectly fine. $5,000? Sure, it could work!
So to give yourself that ceiling, look for lots of place differential, high finishing positions, and as many lead laps as possible. Favor those drivers starting deeper in the field for the first two, and look for somebody near the front for the lead laps. Let’s discuss that now, actually.
Dominators
Everybody knows to load up on the backend drivers for place differential here, but I think proper use of the dominators is an area where we can gain some leverage on the field.
As we know, there are only 188 laps here, which basically means we’d only really want one dominator on both sites. There is an exception to this, but I’ll get to that later. For now, the main dominators we’ll want to look at would be Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, and Ryan Blaney. You know, our favorite Penske guys! They’ve shown time and time again that these races belong to them, and even with the new setup, I don’t see much changing in that regard. I fully expect to see them running 1-2-3 at some point in the race, perhaps for a long time. Anyway, look at one of these three as a primary dominator.
Now, outside of those three, I think our best bet would be Austin or Almirola to lead the first chunk of the race. Both are good at these types of tracks, and I could see them holding the early lead for a while. I don’t think they’ll hold onto it after they lose it during the pitstops, but they could grab enough lead laps to give them enough of a ceiling to pay off. I wouldn’t stack them together though, as they both won’t pay off, but you could certainly take a shot at one or the other (this mostly applies to DraftKings).
I’d give it about a 50% chance that Austin leads the early portion, while I’d give Almirola about a 35% or so chance. The other 15% belongs to Bowyer in the event that Almirola falls back, opening the door for him. If that happens, it’ll also hurt Keselowski, so I’m not super worried about him taking the early lead (though you could certainly skip the other three and go straight for Keselowski if you’d like, that’s completely viable as well).
I wouldn’t stack Austin, Almirola, or Bowyer together in the same lineup, but you could stack any one of them with Keselowski/Logano/Blaney, which would more or less give you two dominators. I wouldn’t do this a whole lot, as it will sort of rely on a bunch of the deeper cars having issues, but I don’t expect to see many people taking this route, so it would be unique. It has a realistic chance of paying off, so don’t feel like the only approach is to completely load up on the deeper cars. Let’s look at an example of this:
In this example, Austin would lead about 40 laps at the start, while one of the other three would lead about 75 during the middle/late portion of the race (I gave them all a 5th place finish for the sake of simplicity). As you can see, if this scenario plays out, it can work. Those scores are plenty high to be in the winning lineup.
So to recap, here are my suggestions on how to handle the dominators;
- Option 1 – one dominator: Take one of the front-runners as a dominator and fade the rest in that lineup (use the dominator feature in the DS to help with this).
- Option 2 – “two” dominators: Take one of the first three drivers (Austin, Almirola, or Bowyer) to lead the first 35-45 laps and pair them up with one of the Penske guys (Keselowski, Logano, or Blaney) to dominate the mid/late race.
- Option 3 – no dominators: It’s also possible that all of the leads laps get spread out so much that they don’t matter, so going extra heavy on the place differential plays could work, too.
Studs
There are only four studs on the sheet this week, and I’m splitting them in half. Jimmie and Newman are good to go on both sites and offer the same ceiling as several of the more expensive drivers. Suarez and Stenhouse are better suited for FanDuel, though you could still take a shot or two with Suarez on DraftKings.
Otherwise, they’re the same as everybody else this week. You hope they survive long enough to move up into the top-10 by the end of this thing, and if they do, you’ll be in a pretty good spot because they may go a bit overlooked.
I’d also like to point out that I really like Ragan over on FanDuel. He’s good at these tracks and I could definitely see him in the winning lineup, and he may go overlooked due to his starting position. He could work on DraftKings too I suppose, but I like him on the blue site better.
Value studs
I know it’s kind of vague, but I listed “everybody $7,000 or under” as the value studs this week. Well, it’s Talladega..so it’s the truth. Every single one of them (that doesn’t start & park) is capable of a top-10 finish here, depending on who wrecks and who manages to avoid the chaos. There’s absolutely no way of knowing who will or will not get caught up in the wrecks, so don’t try to do that. Rather, put yourself in a position to take advantage of the good/bad luck that will unfold, so when we do see half the field get wiped out, you have exposure to these cheaper drivers and can take advantage of all the place differential. Simple!
Stacks
I’m not really big on stacks this week. About the only one I could think of would be a Penske stack over on FanDuel. With so much chaos on the horizon, typical stacks aren’t really in play here, outside of the dominant Penske guys.
Pivots
It’s Talladega, so everybody is a pivot!
In all seriousness though, I really like using the mid-range guys like Newman, Johnson, Suarez, Jones, and DiBenedetto. They offer the same upside as the more expensive guys like Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick at a much lower price point. Why pay $12,000 for the same ceiling that you can get for $7,800?
Closing thoughts
Remember, no cash games at Talladega! Also, remember that this is about the riskiest race that we’ll see all season, so absolutely play within your budget! This is a great race to take a bunch of shots at in MME, but not at the expense of tanking your bankroll.
Finally remember to put yourself in a position to take advantage of the good/bad luck that unfolds. Play within your means, build lineups that make sense, and hope the chaos unfolds in your favor. Good luck, and I’ll see you all in Slack!