DailyFanRacing Newsletter - Michigan
Well, DAMN!! Austin Dillon sure made things interesting last weekend in Richmond.
I must admit, I was pretty disappointed in how that race played out. I was so happy that Austin Dillon was going to get a win by kicking everyone’s asses. And then he got a win by wrecking everyone’s asses.
There is so much I would love to say but it wouldn’t do us any good so let us move forward to the Michigan DFS weekend.
Michigan schedule of events
Friday, August 16th
3:30 pm ET - Xfinity Series Practice/Qualifying
Saturday, August 17th
12:30 pm ET - Cup Series Practice/Qualifying
3:30 pm ET - Xfinity: Cabo Wabo 250
Sunday, August 18th
2:30 pm ET - Cup: FireKeepers Casino 400
The Olympic break certainly put an unwanted pause on things but we have a TON of racing still to come in 2024. We take no slates off and deliver the best in NASCAR & F1 DFS coverage. You can get 20% off your first month at dailyfanracing.com by using Promo Code: “Racing”.
Or get 20% off the rest of the 2024 season with our end-of-year special https://dailyfanmma.com/register/racing-hub-rest-of-year/
Michigan International Speedway is a 2.0-mile asphalt oval with low tire wear that has been a staple on the Xfinity and Cup Series schedules for decades. Michigan is a bit of an oddity on the schedule as there are no perfectly straightforward comparable tracks to it but there are several intermediate tracks that can be used for analysis. Pocono and Indianapolis are monster 2.5 mile speedways that are probably the most comparable while other low-moderate tire wear intermediate tracks to consider are Charlotte, Texas, Las Vegas, and Kansas.
At the end of the day, I like sticking with “Fast cars go fast” when it comes to these high speed ovals and I will certainly lean into the tracks listed above for a bit of insight on how things might play out this weekend.
FireKeepers Casino 400 (Cup Series)
Michigan has been very interesting so far during the NextGen era. The first race here had a competition caution and a massive 9 car wreck. Brilliant move by the Rick Ware crew to leave JJ Yeley out and restart at the front 25 laps into the race… Fun times.
The race last year saw 9 cautions, including one for rain and the longest green flag run during the first 133 laps was 21 laps long. It was a completely disjointed, start
& stop race and then it ended with 67 laps straight of green flag action.
So far, top 10 starters have finished in the top 10 at a 50% clip. That means there have been quite a few place differential type plays starting deeper in the field finishing at the front. This is partly aided by that large crash in the 2022 race and this is definitely a small sample size but both Michigan races with the NextGen car have been littered with variance.
I expect the JGR/23XI Toyota’s to be the class of the field but we could see a challenge from HMS, RFK, and Ryan Blaney. This has honestly been the case all summer. Reddick and Hamlin appeared to be elite at both Pocono and Indy during practice and qualifying but in the race we saw that the field was much closer.
Driver to Watch: Brad Keselowski
Heading into the weekend, BK is my favorite play of the week. A lot can change between now and Sunday, but I really like the way this one sets up.
Brad finished 4th here last year after leading 15 laps. His teammate Buescher won the race. When you look at high speed intermediates in 2024, Keselowski has been amazing. 2nd at Texas, 1st at Darlington, 2nd at Charlotte, and 7th at Pocono. He also led 20 laps at Pocono and secured 20 fast laps. He has finished 9th or better in 12 of the last 17 races here and lastly, this is his home track. He desperately wants to win here and I expect them to throw everything at it.
The best part about this play is that he is $9,000 on DraftKings. We get a potential dominator who has been incredibly fast on this track type all year with the team dominated and finished 1st & 4th here last year at just $9k. They don’t set up much better than this.
Xfinity
I am not going to spend too much time on Xfinity but it is a race where the elite really separate themselves from everyone else. It has been a JGR track for the last couple of years but this has also been RCR’s best track historically, at least in the post Harvick era. RCR has scored wins with Menard, Austin Dillon, and Tyler Reddick at Michigan plus AJ Allmendinger scored a win here thanks to their affiliation with RCR. Allgaier and the JRM guys will likely have a ton of speed as well and lastly, we can not ignore the fact that Stewart-Haas have been the class of the field lately so we have to give some love to Custer and Herbst. Should be a great race.
Final Lap
We will have much more lineup construction tidbits and advice in our race breakdowns, so join DailyFanRacing today to take advantage of the most comprehensive fantasy NASCAR coverage in the industry!
If you haven’t done so already, join our FREE DailyFanRacing Discord, where we are chatting about NASCAR and F1 every week.
As usual, for premium members, we will have full driver-by-driver breakdowns, expert rankings, and projections for each slate 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!