DFS NASCAR: Can-Am 500 Playbook & Optimal Lineups

Can-Am 500

Phoenix International Raceway

Rain was the story of the weekend at Texas, well that and Carl Edwards earning his fourth career win at Texas Motor Speedway. The race was delayed by more than six hours as weather moved into the area Sunday morning and caused issues for drying the track. Once the race got underway, a great pit stop at the right time, lap 257, wound up giving him the lead over Martin Truex Jr. for good as the race was called just 30 or so laps later.  With Edwards win, two spots are now taken for the Championship race next week at Homestead-Miami, leaving just two more spots for six drivers to compete for at PIR.

This is the second race of the year at Phoenix, following a March race that saw Kevin Harvick notch another win at the track in the valley of the sun. It is a similar distance to that of both New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Dover International Speedway, though the banking at Phoenix is distinctly all it’s own. NHMS is flat, Dover is banked at 24 degrees and PIR is in the middle at between nine and 11 degrees of bank. There is also a “dogleg” feature coming out of Turn 2 that allows for kamikaze or dive-bombing type passing maneuvers to be executed as drivers try and move through the field.

At Phoenix, 80% of eventual winners have come from the top-five starting positions in the grid and Chevys have won the races 55% of the time or 22 of 40 run on the desert track. In addition there are a striking amount of green flag laps with 87% historically being run at race speeds with just seven cautions on average each race. All of these numbers mean we need to look at long run speed and less so the short run ability since there are bound to be big gaps between breaks at the 500 km race of 313 laps.

DFS PLAYBOOK

OPTIMAL LINEUPS

The penultimate cash lineup starts with two of the three most expensive drivers on the list in Kevin Harvick ($10,600) and Joey Logano ($10,200). Harvick is the easiest roster choice all season with four wins and a second place finish in the last five races and five wins in six tries going back to November of 2013. Logano is the second best driver on the track this week and thus follows suit being selected second for the six-driver squad. Denny Hamlin ($9,900) and Kurt Busch ($8,400) are the next two to be played. Hamlin has shown good speed all week and has two top-fives to his credit since 2014. Busch needs a win or he is done in the Chase but with six top-10s in the last 10 races here and a win in 2005, he is capable of that task. Danica Patrick ($6,200) and Reed Sorenson ($4,500) are the budget plays this week and represent two of the best at moving through the field regularly with a combined +12 in positional differential.

Sunday’s GPP lineup offers consistency and great upside with it’s selections, led by Kevin Harvick ($10,600) and Martin Truex Jr. ($9,800). Harvick’s portfolio is well established at this point at PIR. Truex Jr. has had some car issues this week that have relegated him to the back of the pack (qualifying P40) and with a car that hasn’t been on the track until the second practice of the weekend on Saturday afternoon. This combination makes him a risk/reward driver that works better for GPP than cash. Brad Keselowski ($9,500) and Chase Elliot ($8,700) are next up in the squad offering a combination of consistency and upside. Keselowski has four top-10s in the last five races here and though Chase has only raced once in a Sprint Cup car here, he did well going from 17^th to an eighth place finish. Aric Almirola ($6,700) and Reed Sorenson ($4,500) finish out the lineup with a sleeper and a budget play. Almirola has five finishes between 10^th and 19^th here and if he’s to do that again will get positional points from starting P27. Sorenson is the cheapest driver this week but has the second-best positional differential mark behind only Harvick amongst drivers with three or more races here.