NASCAR DFS: Folds Of Honor QuikTrip 500 Track Breakdown

Writing this has a sense of deja vu to it. We were here two and a half months ago before everything stopped. In fact, we had published the Track Breakdown, and then two days later the schedule came to a halt. We’re back now though and this time for real, not the unofficial iRacing Pro Invitational Series race they ran before it was televised.

Atlanta is a storied track in the Cup series as it used to host the season-ending race and typically settled any Championship battles that were wrapping up as well. It’s since been moved to the earlier part of the schedule where the rough and ragged track surface plays an early test on the teams for if they have their setups correct for the key distance of the season, 1.5 miles. It is a quad-oval, intermediate-length track with turns banked at 24 degrees and the straightaways at five degrees of tilt. The tricky part of the track though is the aging surface which hasn’t been repaved since the track was rebuilt and reorientated in 1997 which makes this one of the oldest racing surfaces on the schedule. In fact, the track was planning on repaving it a few years ago, but the drivers led a successful argument to keep it as is since the racing wasn’t like all the other 1.5-mile tracks due to tire wear and trying to find grip in the different grooves. This year’s race will see all three NASCAR series use the same tires and neither the left side or right side tires have been raced on before but they are newly designed to help increase grip and deal with heat build up better so that flat tires aren’t as much of an issue this weekend.

In the last 10 races at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the manufactures have seen varying amounts of success:

Credit FRCS

With the way the Chevy’s have looked so far this year, that success might just continue this weekend.

This is a track where starting close to the front has typically come in handy if you want to win the race, as you can see below, but in the last five races, that hasn’t held true as winners have come from P19, P3, P5, P19, P37 respectively.

Credit to Jayski

Core Drivers By Tier

Tier 1 - Chase Elliott

• How can we avoid the pole-sitter at his home track on a hot streak?

• He has nearly won four-straight races and did win one and the price isn’t prohibitive on either site.

• The pole-sitter has averaged the highest point total on both sites in the last five races.

Tier 2 - Kurt Busch

• Busch has one of the best average finishes over the last four races here at 5.5

• He’s one of only four drivers in the field to finish in the top-10 four-straight times here

• Busch is the only driver with at least five races in the last eight to finish each of his races run inside the top-15.

Tier 3 - Erik Jones

• How can we not play Jones after his race at Bristol and then having his price drop on DK?

• At Atlanta, he’s moved up 5.3 spots a race over his three races here and ranks 7th in average finish at 10.7.

• He’s finished P5 twice in the last four races and has moved up 10 spots both times

Contrarian Play - Ryan Blaney

• Blaney will start P7 on Sunday and doesn’t have the best average finish here at 19.3

• He has gone forward roughly three spots a race in that span though and in the last two races he’s average 5.4x value

• In the last four races this season, he’s scored 63+ twice and 10 or less twice so he’s clearly been hit and miss.

Fade - Ryan Newman

• Our favorite PD play is the fade this week because he is the opposite of a PD play this week

• In the last four races here, he’s got just one finish inside the top-15 and he goes backward 18.2 spots a race

• In the last eight races, a -10.6 PD mark is what he’s posted and this year he’s gone back and forth between moving forward and moving backward

Last Four Races at Atlanta

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

Top-20 Drivers Over Last 8 Atlanta Races

Top-20 Drivers At Similar Races (Atlanta, Auto Club, Chicago, Homestead)

Momentum

The driver and team momentum tables have been made to match the last four and eight race tables with range of finish instead of the prior wins, top-fives, top-10s, and top-15 columns. They will also show those stats for the last five races of this season prior to the current week’s race to show you who’s been hot and who’s been cold.

Driver

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

Team

Finish Ranges By Starting Spot Ranges

This table shows where the ranges of starting spots have finished regardless of driver in those spots over the last four Atlanta races. The left-hand column shows the starting spots in groups of five and the columns going across show the finish spots in groups of five up to outside the top-20.

Weekly Rankings

The Race Hist column is based on average finish in the last four races, Recent Form is ranked on average finish of the momentum tables, Track Hist is ranked on of average finish over the last eight races at that track, Type Hist is ranked on the average finish of the similar races table. The DFS columns are ranked on the values provided by those drivers over the last two and five races at this event based on the salaries on each site this week. DK is ranked across all tiers while FD is ranked from best to worst values in each tier to even out the wide range of salaries and narrow point differences.

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

DFS Value Averages

This replaces the DFS Scoring Averages table that had been here. Instead, we have the DFS Value figures instead. We have taken their points scored over the last two and five races on each site and averaged those out and then divided that average by their salary divided by 1,000. For example, Kevin Harvick’s FD value over the last two races is 6.27 meaning he’s averaged 87.78 FD points the last two races (6.27 x 14 (his salary divided by 1,000)=87.78. The Seas. Avg column shows you the value they’ve provided this season based on their average points per race divided by the salary for this week’s race so staying with Harvick, he’s averaging 65.38 points per race which at $14,000 gives him a 4.67x value on average. Keep in mind that it’s not all about value when building a lineup on FD as salary dictates how many points that value equates to.

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4