NASCAR DFS: Go Bowling 235 Track Breakdown

The last time we had a brand new track on the Cup series schedule was two years ago when the Charlotte Roval made its appearance in the playoffs of 2018. That’s what we have going on this weekend as the Daytona Road Course makes its first appearance as a substitute for the traditional Watkins Glen race weekend given the Covid situation. This isn’t a standard road course either and it’s certainly not one that drivers have previous experience on either. The Daytona Road Course is typically used for IMSA races and the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona which are both not related to the stock car ranks of NASCAR. However, this layout is even slightly different than that layout as they added a front stretch chicane off of Turn 4.

This race is scheduled to be 65 laps in length around the 14-turn, 3.61 layout with the stages being 15, 15, and 35 laps in length. The cars will start at the typical start/finish line on the front stretch of Daytona before making a left turn to head into the infield road course section which is typically considered a pretty fast section even with the two sharp turns at either end, both being right-handers. Once they are done with the infield section they make a left turn to head back on to the normal oval and into what would normally be Turn 1 and Turn 2 before heading down the backstretch and into a bus stop of sorts before entering what would be Turn 3 and Turn 4 in the oval and then into the final chicane off of Turn 4.

This track can’t really be compared to any other, as it typical with most road courses but we can take a look at how the two Charlotte Roval races have turned out as well as recent Watkins Glen races since the Roval is the same concept and the speeds at Watkins Glen are expected to be similar to those at Daytona on Sunday. The speeds are also the reason that Goodyear is bringing the traditional Watkins Glen tires this weekend, plus rain tires which are the same ones that they brought to Road America for Xfinity last weekend. As far as the package is concerned, it will a combo of the high-drag and 750-horsepower setup that is used at short tracks and road courses but the high-drag is different and only being run this weekend.

Below I have embedded a video from iRacing of what a lap around the track looks like from inside the car. Several drivers have been getting practice laps in on iRacing this week, most notably William Byron in Cup, Chase Briscoe in Xfinity, and Ty Majeski in Truck, as they were getting practice in on Wednesday with the stars of the Coca-Cola iRacing series.

Strategy Notes

For those of you who played the Road America slate for Xfinity last weekend, you’ll be familiar with road course strategy but if you didn’t or need a refresher, here we go. Laps led will not be a major factor in scoring this week as there are just 65 laps in the Cup race and typically at road races they are split decently evenly between a few different drivers, save for last year’s Watkins Glen when Chase Elliott dominated. Finish position is a huge stat this week and finding guys that can move up will boost the scores as well. For GPPs we can go after a few guys that can lead laps and finish highly, especially on FD, but for Cash we’re going more so after mainly PD guys and perhaps a couple that may just finish around where they start in the top-10. Value is also a bit out the window here this week as in a race this short it’s decently hard to get a full 5x out of your lineups let alone every driver in it. Expect lower than normal money lines across the board.

Programming Notes

This week’s track breakdown will be a bit different simply because it’s a brand new track and there aren’t a lot of things to compare it to either. So you may not see quite as many tables but there are still plenty of helpful stats to analyze the drivers in the field. I will also take a different approach to the Core Drivers this week and instead do a bit of a bubble watch list since there are only four races left until the playoffs and so there is added pressure to these drivers. We will have a full field breakdown in the podcast this week that will come out Friday early morning as well as having Cup projections, rankings, playbook, and example lineups. Dan will also have the standard Truck and Xfinity coverage as well.

Drivers To Watch This Week

Again we’re focused more on playoff bubble drivers for this section going forward.

Erik Jones

• Jones has five top-10 finishes in the last eight road races he’s run

• He needs a solid performance to continue to make the case for a ride next year

• Starting P20 gives him a great shot for PD if he can get a sixth top-10 on a road course

Kurt Busch

• Busch has that type of solid floor we’re looking for for cash builds this week

• He has six top-10s in the last eight road course races while moving up nearly eight spots a race

• Busch is safely above the cutoff line with five top-10s in the last six races this year

Matt DiBenedetto

• Matty D is another driver still not signed for next year but is warming up with four top-10s in the last eight races this year.

• He has two career top-10s at road courses and both came last year including a P4 at Sonoma.

• He’s starting P10 and the 21-car has made a habit of sticking up front at tracks he’s good at, expect that again this weekend.

Contrarian: Clint Bowyer

• Bowyer is still above the cutoff by 60 points but isn’t going in the right direction with seven-straight finishes outside the top-10

• At road courses though he’s been able to finish in the top-five twice in the last five and three finishes of P11 or worse.

• There is still discussion about if Bowyer is done after this year, but a great finish at a new course could flip the convo in his favor.

Fade: Bubba Wallace

• He’s finished 14th or worse in the last six races this year and generally gone backward

• Wallace isn’t a good road racer even with practice as he’s never finished better than P24 in six Cup road races

• With all of the additional deals coming his way and already talking to at least two teams for next year, there’s not as much riding on his showings going down the stretch.

Last Two Road/Oval Races

The data in these tables are from the two Charlotte Roval races in the last two years. It’s the most comparable track to the Daytona Road Course.

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Tier 4

Top-20 Drivers Over Last Eight Road Races

These tables include data from races at Charlotte Roval, Watkins Glen, and Sonoma since 2017.

Momentum

These show the 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.

Tier 1

Tier 2

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Tier 4

Team

Finish Spot Ranges By Starting Spots Ranges

This table shows the finish spots over the last two Charlotte Roval races with a total of 80 finishes accounted for based on where the starting spots for each finish were.

Weekly Rankings

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

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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. This week they are calculated from the last two Roval races.

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4