Martin Truex Jr. has swapped out his engine and will start from the rear. Update in his description.
We are in the middle of the Round of 8 this week as the schedule brings Texas as the host for the second time this season. Last week’s crazy finish has been the talk all week, as it was to start the NASCAR Podcast as well, and rightfully so as Joey Logano punched his ticket to Homestead-Miami with that bump-and-run at Martinsville. Now it’s time to focus on the fastest track at the 1.5-mile distance that NASCAR comes to.
Not only is there a distinct difference in scenery this week as we go from the rolling mountains and woods of Southern Virginia to the massive metroplex that is the Dallas-Fort Worth area in urban North Texas, but there is a distinct difference in speeds between the two tracks. Martinsville, the shortest and slowest track in the schedule, gives way to one of the fastest overall and the fastest 1.5-miler of the bunch. A quad-oval is the proper description of this track’s shape as there are two turns in the front stretch compared to just one on a tri-oval, picture Charlotte Motor Speedway as a good comp. Prior to the 2017 season the track underwent a repave and reconfiguration over the first half of the track as they lowered the banking from 24 degrees in Turns 1 & 2 down to 20 degrees and added a whopping 20 feet of width to the track which makes the first turn one of the trickiest on the NASCAR slate. Turns 3 & 4 however remained exactly how they were before at 24 degrees and width is the same as well as the bumps are the same too, despite the repave. The repave has turned the track more into a single-groove for grip right now though you can make passes inside and outside of people, you just risk running out of the grip on the track when you do. There is also a new tire compound from Goodyear on the cars this week that is supposed to wear down more and fall off more as well (get slower) but so far through practice that hasn’t really been the case in race trim on Saturday.
In four of the last six races here, there has been one driver to lead more than 140 laps and the rest get divided amongst a few other drivers, however that does include races in which one driver led 312 of the 334 laps, but ultimately finished second. So it’s a good idea to focus on one or two laps led dominators on Sunday and put them in as many lineups as possible. For other trends and info like that, take a look at the podcast that Dan Malin and I did for this week’s race that is up on the site as well as iTunes and SoundCloud among other locales.
There will be 334 laps in the scheduled race which means a decent amount of bonus points are available across both sites. For DraftKings there will be 250.5 between fastest laps and laps led and on FanDuel there will be 200.4 between laps led and laps completed if all five drivers complete each lap. So keep that in mind when building lineups and what the cash lines will be at by races end.
Stacks
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