The most unpredictable race is this week as NASCAR rolls into Talladega, Alabama for the first of two races there. The monster track allows for the highest speeds of almost any track on the schedule, save for possibly Michigan. It is a 2.66-mile tri-oval layout with 33-degree banking in the turns and 16 degrees of banking on the front stretch. With those kind of stats it’s no surprise that this is one of the two restrictor plate tracks to help reduce the speeds of the cars. The downside to this is the pack racing it induces and the tendency for larger crashes.
Known as “The Big One” a crash that involves a quarter to half the field happens almost like clockwork each race and while it generally involves the drivers in the middle of the pack, there is no way to tell who will be there when it happens. To put it in other terms, 40.3% of all drivers who enter a race at Talladega in May have an incident during the race. That’s a lot.
This is one of those races that speed in practices doesn’t necessarily matter in a sense, sure it’s always good to have a fast car, but here, biding time until moving up is generally a winning strategy. This is also a race where leaving a lot of salary on the table is a good idea, and when I say a lot I mean a lot. Like $5,000-$10,000 on the table is typically what will be left from the winning rosters. I know typically leaving $500-$1,000 is a lot but with the cheap guys generally posting the highest scores this week, a lot more unspent salary cap produces high scores. Position differential is a thing to focus on this week with laps led being at a minimum (188 laps total in the race and a lot of different drivers leading) and fastest laps are so random in general, but specifically at ‘Dega, that they don’t matter as much either. If you look back at the Track Breakdown article you will see that no one has more than 29 fastest laps total in the last four races here.
Speaking of fastest laps, they are not a stat category in FanDuel, currently. FanDuel, in the scoring they announced this week, gives .1 points for Laps Completed, .1 points for Laps Led, and +/- .5 points for Position Differential. Aside from that they have 43 points for first, 40 for second, 38 for third and then a point less per position all the way down the list to one point for 40thposition. These differ from DraftKings with DK giving .5 points per Fastest Lap, .25 points per Lap Led, and +/- 1 point for Position Differential. Finishing positions are different too with 46 points for first, 42 for second, 41 for third and then a point less per position all the way down to four points for 40th. To put these differences in perspective, Kyle Busch scored 102.5, 104.3, and 117 in the last three races on DraftKings and 101.9, 104.7, and 91.5 in the last three on FanDuel the biggest difference in scoring came in the race with the most fastest laps (117-91.5). The laps completed stat can be big, especially at Talladega, when several drivers won’t finish the race and thus can cost you ability to rack up the points in FanDuel.
Stacks
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