The second road race in three weeks and the third of the season is upon us this week at Sonoma with the Toyota Save-Mart 350. The name of the game for road courses is to put together a roster that has high finishers in it and don’t necessarily sell out for laps led as there are only 90 laps in this race.
Cash Strategy
We want mainly PD plays for cash as you can still hit the money line even if there’s a laps-led dominator (which is perhaps a bit more unlikely here). You can put one driver in the lineup who could be the dominator and typically those drivers are starting near the front of the pack. As I stated in the playbook, typically we see one driver lead more than 50 laps in a race, though that’s been a bit more hit and miss recently here. Cautions are harder to come by at road courses as well.
GPP Strategy
For GPPs we can focus a bit more on drivers starting up front in the hopes they stay there but based on how the field is set this week, there will be chalky PD plays as well that you’ll need at least one of to boost the score. Here is where we can think about going for two potential laps-led drivers, though one is still the preferred method of building. We can also take some more risks here with less experienced or less consistent drivers because if they happen to get the setup right or play the right strategy, they could hold a spot simply because of how tough it can be to pass here from time to time.
As always make sure to read the rest of the content that is out for the week in the Track Breakdown and Playbook and Rankings and listen to the Podcast to get a full view of what we think of the field. The first line for each site is the cash core and the second line is the GPP core though they can be intermingled.
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