Hello again Army, and welcome to this week’s Calming the Chaos! We head east to Phoenix this week, for the first short/flat track of the season. This is always a fun race, especially for tournaments, as we’ll get our first taste of a more dominator-heavy race for 2020. We have plenty to dig into here, so let’s get to it!
As always, be sure to check out my driver list & tools suite and the coach’s cheat sheet. If you have any questions, reach out to me in Slack at #nillys-garage-nas-mlb and I’ll be happy to help however I can.
Phoenix Raceway
As I mentioned, Phoenix is a short/flat track (1-mile long without a whole lot of banking), so we’ll need to adjust our approach this week to accommodate the extra lead laps that are available. Don’t go rushing to build all those stars & scrubs lineups just yet though, we need to discuss something VERY important first…
Land of the punt-less
If you were here last year (and read these articles), you may recall me discussing the punts at these tracks, and how they get stuck in what I call “staggered formation hell.” If you do remember all of that, then this is just a reminder to not play them! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, well, let’s discuss it now.
Taken from a 2019 article:
If you remember, this is a track where I recommend outright fading all of the punts due to them getting stuck in what I called “staggered formation hell.” Basically, any sort of medium/long green flag run will quickly start putting them numerous laps down, and when the caution comes out, they start getting locked down in a staggered formation. You’ll have a handful of lucky drivers at -1 lap, but then you’ll get a few at -2, a few at -3, a few at -4, and so on. Once a driver is stuck anywhere beyond being one lap down (which will be a lot of them), they’re basically stuck there for the day unless there’s a huge wreck that wipes out half the field (which isn’t really something that happens here).
In other words, the slower scrubs/punts don’t come anywhere close to reaching value here (on either site), so we can just ignore them this week entirely. Doing that will force more balanced lineups this week, which is great, because there are plenty of good options to help tie those lineups together.
Return of the short spoilers
We’ll see the return of the shorter spoiler this weekend (and at all other short tracks this season, if I understand), which means that the 2019 data is a lot less relevant than what we got from 2016-2018. Keep that in mind as you do your research!
Weekend approach
This track is good for cash games and tournaments alike, as it’s not overly chaotic (yay for cash), but also has a fair amount of upside for the various dominators (yay for GPP) that shouldn’t be too chalky (yay for both). If you’re still getting your feet wet with NASCAR and/or aren’t one of those that get overly heavy on the GPPs, you can follow a traditional 80/20 approach here; 80% cash games (ladders) and 20% GPP.
If you’re playing cash games this week, make sure you’re laddering up here, as there will be plenty of upside for your lineup(s) to go off when your dominators stay up front for a while. Don’t limit yourself to a 2x return for cash games!
Separating yourself from the field
Punt the punts
While they won’t be overly popular, a great way to start this week will be to fade the punts that aren’t going to return enough value (mostly everybody starting 31st or higher, but see the coach’s cheat sheet for the exact drivers.
Dominators
With 312 laps to go around, dominators are going to be pretty important here. We’re going to need at least one of them at the bare minimum, but for tournaments we’ll want to look at having two of them for most lineups (you can certainly run some solo dominator lineups, but don’t get too carried away with them).
Kyle Busch is going to be a popular choice, but since he is starting 10th, we know that somebody else will probably take the first chunk of lead laps, and he may not get his until the second (or even third) stage. If you use him, the obvious choice here would be to pair him with either Chase Elliott or Kevin Harvick for your two dominator lineups.
There are other good choices of course, such as the flat track savant Denny Hamlin, or even Ryan Blaney (who led 94 laps at this race last year, and who has looked very strong this year despite what his finishes have been). I would say that these five drivers have the best chance of paying off as a dominator, so these are the ones I would mix and match. There are enough laps to go around that we don’t really need to avoid any combinations, but if you’re looking to be a little different, make some lineups without the two up front (and hope that Chase/Harvick don’t hold the early lead or that they have issues along the way).
Another option would be Keselowski, and since he’s starting 14th, he can be mixed with any of these other drivers without much concern (the caveat would be Kyle Busch, since they’re both not likely to lead the first stage, and possibly second depending on how pit stops go and when the cautions fall).
Studs / value studs
It’s a good thing this section is loaded, because if we’re avoiding the punts, we’ll need some other not-so-expensive drivers to pick up the slack. Load up on these guys to compliment your dominators; Austin Dillon/Tyler Reddick, William Byron/Jimmie Johnson, Chastain, and perhaps Stenhouse Jr, too. I think we’ll see at least two of these guys in the winning lineup.
DraftKings vs Fanduel
There are probably more similarities between the two sites this week than there are differences; we need dominators on both sites, we want to avoid the punts everywhere, and the studs/value studs are going to be important in tying together lineups.
The biggest difference would be that there are some guys that we can take shots with on FanDuel (i.e. Kurt, Jones, Almirola, possibly even DiBenedetto) that would be harder to make work on DraftKings.
Closing thoughts
We’re going to learn a lot about short tracks from this race, but I think we can use race theory to figure out a lot of what will happen before the race. Remember to fade the punts, play within your means, and enjoy the race. Good luck, and I’ll see you all in Slack!