Hello again Army, and welcome to this week’s Calming the Chaos! We head to my home track this week, good ol’ Kansas Speedway. Unfortunately, for the first time in many years, I won’t get to attend…no fun! But hey, this being my home track makes it the one I know the best, so there is that.
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.
Kansas Speedway
This marks the end of our little 3-race run of 1.5-mile tracks, and to be honest, things aren’t a whole lot different here than what we’ve seen these last couple of races. This track is smooth like glass, but seeing that Kentucky and Texas were both recently repaved, that won’t make this track drastically different.
More of the same, but fewer laps this time
One big difference is that we drop from 334 to 267 laps, which will bump us down to wanting 2 dominators in all formats on both sites. I don’t think we’ll see the need for three of them like we could get away with last week, so keep that in mind.
Oct 20, 2018; Kansas City, KS, USA; Cars run laps during practice for the Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway. Mandatory Credit: Amy Kontras-USA TODAY Sports
There was a time when I couldn’t go to one of these races without seeing a red flag, so while I don’t expect this to resemble Talladega, I do expect a little bit of chaos to unfold. They seemed to hit the middle of the pack most frequently, so consider making more pivots in the middle/back of the field rather than the front.
The Field
Dominators
It’s all about Harvick again this week – fantastic history here (it’s more than what the stat sheet says, he’s just really good here because it’s so smooth) and starting on the pole all but guarantees him to lead the early race, even with Logano starting next to him. He’s the main primary dominator option in all formats, especially cash games where I expect him to be extremely popular. Eat that chalk!!
Logano is his direct pivot, and while anybody starting 2nd has a decent shot, it’s hard to really get behind him this time. Harvick is just that good here. Still, there’s always a chance, so do at least get some exposure to him. I don’t see a front row stack paying off like it did last week, as I think we’ll either see a solo performance for a while, or one of the mid/late race options will come in and soak up the remaining lead laps after one of these two are done with them. That said, you can stack a few with these two, but don’t get carried away.
After that, it’s Truex again..shocker, I know. The 1.5-mile king is fantastic here like he is at all of them, and I love him as the main secondary dominator option. Elliott would be his direct pivot, as well as Keselowski, Busch, and Bowman. I would lean towards using these guys as pivots instead of trying to stack these guys, as they’ll mostly be fighting for the same lead laps.
Finally, we have Blaney and Almirola again. Between the two, I like Blaney better (and I like him just behind Truex), but both have more than proven their worth lately. I mostly see them also as secondary dominator options, with how strong Harvick looks as the primary. I really like Blaney as an option here, as he’s shown some prowess in the past, and I could easily see him splitting lead laps with Harvick like he’s done in the past.
Studs / value studs
Same old story with Jones and Reddick here; both have a pretty good chance of finishing in the top-10, both could see a top-5, and both have a high chance of being in the winning lineup (I’m guessing we’ll see at least one of them in it again this week…maybe both like last week).
Bell had his starting position moved up quite a bit, but he’s still squarely in play. While I do like Jones/Reddick a little more, in reality, Bell is right up there with them. He tends to just jump into the top-10 and stay there all day (until something bad happens), but if he’s able to put together a full race, a top-5 finish is not out of the question.
After that we have some familiar faces; Bowyer and Johnson start fairly deep and have a lot of upside when they put together a good race, but I’m really interested in Byron here. He always looks good at the races here, but bad luck has given him one too many poor finishes. His 5th place finish last year proved my theory on him last year, and I’m rolling with it here again!
Some cheaper options include Custer, Austin, and Stenhouse. All three offer top-10 upside, roughly in the order I listed them, and all are in play here. I see Stenhouse as sort of a cheaper version of Byron, though his chances of hitting that same ceiling are quite a bit lower. Still, he hasn’t been in play in a while, so play him while you can.
DiBenedetto and Buescher are starting close to their ceilings, but they do have legitimate top-10 upside, so if nothing else, be sure to have some exposure to them over on FanDuel. I don’t see them as being very popular, so they make good pivot options.
Value / punts
Texas didn’t pan out for Ty, but he’s starting even deeper this time around, so feel free to just plug him in wherever you want to. He’s got plenty of natural finishing position upside and could easily find his way into the winning lineup this time around. He’s as close to a core play in this price range as we have this week.
Preece and Nemechek are also pretty strong options here, especially in GPP. I like Preece in all formats, and stacked with whoever you want, but I would probably lean GPP for Nemechek, and I’d be more inclined to use him as a pivot to Ty instead of stacking these two. Like I mentioned in the notes, I think he would need Ty to have a not-so-great race in order to wind up in the winning lineup. Either way, these two have lots and lots of upside, so be sure you’ve got both of them in your driver pool.
LaJoie, Suarez, and McDowell are next, and I like them roughly in that order. Maybe McDowell slightly above Suarez, but despite his finish last week, I’m still not feeling him this time. If the race gets a little wild, sure, he has a good amount of upside, but without help, he screams “mid-20’s car” to me. Anyway, LaJoie has decent upside, and Suarez is starting very deep, so he’s in play for that (he can hang out around 29th or so naturally, so a few wrecks could get him a top-25). None of their floors seem very solid to me, so I’d lean GPP with these guys.
Quick recap
Dominators (2 for cash, 1-2 for GPP)
- Primary – Harvick, Logano
- Secondary – Truex, Blaney, Almirola, Keselowski
- Secondary pivots – Elliott, Bowman, Busch, Hamlin
- Solo – Harvick
Studs
- Jones/Reddick, Bell, Bowyer/Johnson
- Pivots – Byron
- FanDuel pivots – DiBenedetto/Buescher
Value studs
- Custer, Austin, Stenhouse
Value drivers
- Ty, Preece, Nemechek
- Pivots – LaJoise, Suarez, McDowell
Punts
- I’d rather pay up to the value drivers here
Closing thoughts
Did I mention how displeased I am that I don’t get to watch this race live? Well, at least we still have DFS. Good luck, and I’ll see you all in Slack!