NASCAR DFS: Quaker State 400 Track Breakdown

Things get a bit back to normal this week with Kentucky being in a similar spot to last year in the middle of July. Kentucky is an intermediate track at 1.5 miles in length and generally it’s a bit on the shallower side in terms of banking, though there is different banking on each end of the track. This tends to lead to Turn 3 being one of the toughest to manage on the Cup circuit as it’s a shallow, wide, entry that allows you to sweep up toward the wall if you’re not careful.

Like a typical 1.5-mile track, track position is key here as clean air does wonders for the car setup and passing can be tough to accomplish as only one of the last five races here had more than five drivers have double-digit positive place differential and most of those drivers that moved up that far were fast cars that had a bad qualifying lap or had their cars setup for the longer runs of the race rather than the shorter runs of qualifying.

Chevys haven’t done terribly well here in the past but again they are faster this year than they have been the last few years so watch it for potentially surprising performances from them but overall Toyota’s have won three of the last five here, though both of those drivers (Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr.) haven’t been great this year.

Strategy Notes

The 400-mile race will happen over three stages of 80-80-107 for 267 laps. That means there are a decent amount of laps led points to be had here and so it should be a decent focus when putting together your lineups. Place differential is a bit harder to come by here but still needs to be a focus though we need to adjust our assumptions as to just how many guys will move up significantly.

Core Drivers By Tiers

Tier 1 - Kyle Busch

• Busch has won this race previously and finished 2nd here last year behind his brother

• As disappointing as Busch has been this year, he does have the 4th-ranked Green Flag speed this year.

• The pole-sitter has done very well here in a DFS perspective as they typically lead a bunch of laps and don’t fall back too far in the field.

Tier 2 - Erik Jones

• Jones has run here three times and never finished outside the top-10

• He’s been very quick of late though he doesn’t have the finishes to prove it do to bad luck.

• Jones gives us a nice PD play in the mid-tier and PD will be tough to come by on Sunday.

Tier 3 - Ryan Preece

• Preece has been a PD play for us for the last few weeks and before getting involved in a wreck at Indy, he’d already started to move up well.

• He’s starting in the back again on Sunday at Kentucky and is still cheap on both sites.

• Preece ran here last year and moved up eight spots after starting P29 proving he can move up well.

Contrarian Play - Aric Almirola

• Almirola is in the midst of the best stretch of his career as he has five-straight top-five finishes.

• He’s starting in the top-four again this week which likely brings the ownership down since the upside isn’t really there.

• The prices are the same on both sites as they were last week and so if he holds his spot again, he hits value.

Fade - Alex Bowman

• Bowman has not been good here in his career with an average finish of 30.8 in four races

• In the last 10 races this season, he’s gone backwards seven times including a couple of 30th or worse finishes while starting in the top-five.

• The value hasn’t been great for Bowman either here as it’s low, even at his depressed DK salary.

Last Four Kentucky Races

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

Top-20 Drivers Over Last Eight Kentucky Races

Top-20 Drivers At Similar Races

(Kentucky, Las Vegas, Kansas, Chicago)

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.

Drivers

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

Race Hist, Recent Form, Track Hist, Type Hist are all ranked on average finish position over the last four races at the track, five races this season, eight races at this track, and similar races respectively. The Avg. Rating and Top-15 % columns are ranked on those categories in the last four races at this track. The L8 PD column ranks the position differential over the last eight races from best (most positive) to worst (most negative).

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.

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4