DailyFanRacing NASCAR Preview - Talladega
What’s up, everyone?! It’s Dustin Maybin (@CUPharmDFS) back again with your weekly DailyFanRacing newsletter!
Weekend in Review
Martinsville ended up as disappointing action-wise as expected. The aerodynamic changes to the car had little effect as there were only TWO lead changes during the 400 lap Cup race. The amount of shifting in the turns and overwhelming mechanical grip made it nearly impossible to pass in dirty air, and as we’ve become accustomed to, pit strategy was the biggest determinant of finishing position. Kyle Larson scored his 2nd win of the season, while others like Denny Hamlin and Ryan Preece felt like their mistakes gave the race away.
Track Preview
This week, we go from one extreme to another. We just finished with one of the slowest short tracks on the schedule in Martinsville. Now, NASCAR will take on the high banks of Talladega.
Talladega is a 2.66-mile tri-oval and is considered a superspeedway style track due to the importance of the draft in maintaining speed compared to the other cars. Daytona is the only true comparable track, though Atlanta has become somewhat useful since its reconfiguration last season. Talladega has become synonymous with “The Big One” as there is often a wreck that takes out upwards of five drivers.
The three-wide, closely packed racing lends itself to these wrecks since the tiniest of mistakes can set off a cascading reaction throughout the field. It should be noted though that Talladega is quite a bit wider than Daytona, so there is theoretically more room for drivers to maneuver and miss the wrecks. Given the current superspeedway package, that may be even more evident this weekend. As we saw at Daytona in February, three-wide racing was almost non-existent; drivers ran in two-wide in long trains, rarely stepping out of line to pass for fear of being relegated to the back of the line.
Regardless, it (hopefully) shouldn’t be as uneventful as last weekend in Martinsville. Here’s a look at the weekend schedule for on-track action:
Friday, April 21st - 5:35 pm ET - Xfinity Series Qualifying
Saturday, April 22nd - 10:30 am ET - Cup Series Qualifying
Saturday, April 22nd - 4:00 pm ET - Ag-Pro 300 (Xfinity)
Sunday, April 23rd - 3:00 pm ET - GEICO 500 (Cup)
A few things you may notice: Trucks are off this week, and there are no practice sessions. The good thing is that qualifying for both races is the day prior to the race, so we will have plenty of time to build lineups this weekend.
There isn’t a ton of DFS advice to give for this track type, other than the overused “stack the back” mantra, especially prior to qualifying, so we’ll save that for the weekend breakdowns and podcast.
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As usual, for premium members, we will have full driver-by-driver breakdowns, expert rankings, and projections for both races this weekend, in addition to a slate strategy article and podcast for Cup.
Have a great week, and we’ll look forward to you winning with us again this weekend!