Racing on the Great Plains is back this week with the race at Kansas Speedway on Saturday night. After the wildness of the past two tracks, Talladega and Dover, things calm down a bit with a 1.5-mile tri-oval layout this week just west of Kansas City, MO and KS. It’s ironic that I say the action calms down a bit because the weather certainly hasn’t this weekend as some violent thunderstorms rolled through Kansas Thursday night and Friday morning that drop hail and lightning on the track and surrounding area. In fact it hit the track so hard that there was a 30-minute delay during the marathon 2.5-hour practice on Friday to remove a ton of water that was trapped under the track surface that had created a soft spot in the exit of Turn 2.

As for the racing at the track, like I broke down in the Track Breakdown piece “in the last four Spring races here, there have been 19-20 lead changes per race (keep in mind a driver has to finish a lap as the leader for it to be considered a change, that is to say that if for example Martin Truex Jr. gets passed into Turn 1 but then regains the lead by the time the start/finish line comes back around, the lead change doesn’t count) and 8-9 incident cautions per race. During that span the winner has come from P3, P6, P19, and P13 from most recent to oldest race and going back to the first race of 2013 is the last time a pole sitter won the April/May race at Kansas. Overall the pole winner has won three out of the last 10 races here and a P5 starting spot or better has won five times overall (including the three pole sitters) for an average starting spot of 7.3 for the winner.”

This is also a track where you can move up through the field with 10 drivers in the race averaging a position differential of +6 or better this week; that’s a lot. There are also seven drivers in the field (who have raced the last four races) who have gone backwards at least six spots a race as well. So a lot of yo-yoing is happening in the typical race. Part of the moving backwards could be due to the high amount of speeding penalties on pit road at Kansas. As mentioned in the Practice Notes this week, there have been 63 such infractions in the last 10 races here and just in the last four alone (both 2016 and both 2017 races), drivers have been dinged 28 times for speeding at various parts of pit road. Just ask Denny Hamlin how pit road speeding works for your average finish (he’s been nabbed more than almost anyone this year).

A couple of important pointers this week. Firstly there are several drivers starting in the back of the pack this week for inspection issues at qualifying, or changes that will have to be made to the car after qualifying. It doesn’t prohibit you from playing them but realize that the drivers will be scored by DK and FD by where they officially qualified and not where they start. Secondly, this is the last points-race in the schedule until the Coca-Cola 600 on Sunday of Memorial Day weekend in two weeks. Next week is the All-Star Race festivities and if there is DFS action, I will have a small playbook for it, but nothing more.

I will be available on Saturday on the Fantasy Alarm Chat until 6pm ET if you have any questions about lineup construction.

Good Luck!f

Stacks

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