NASCAR: Federated Auto Parts 400 Playbook & Lineups

Federated Auto Parts 400

Richmond Raceway

Last week’s Bonjangles’ Southern 500 saw some intense racing down the stretch and some inopportune incidents happen. Just 18 laps into the race, Clint Bowyer suffered a blown engine and his night came to an end after a promising showing in practice. On lap 313, Denny Hamlin missed the entry to pit lane after going too fast to make it in time, and gave up 20 seconds to then-leader Martin Truex Jr. He stalked him over the last 50+ laps of the race and with two laps to go, he caught him for the lead. Overall it was Hamlin’s second win in the event, though it turned out to be ruled an encumbered finish and thus won’t count towards his playoff standing. He and Dale Earnhardt Jr. will both be with interim Crew Chiefs for the Richmond race due to post-race inspection penalties.

Travel up I-95 about 4.5 hours and you have made the trip from “The Lady in Black” to “America’s Premier Short Track.” Just north of downtown Richmond is where the .75-mile Tri-Oval layout of Richmond Raceway sits as it plays host to it’s second race of the year and the regular season finale. It is qualified as a short track, thanks to it being under a mile per trip around, but it is more in the shape of standard tracks than the other short tracks, in Bristol and Martinsville. The banking at Richmond is more similar to what you would see at a bigger track, 14 degrees in all four turns and eight on the front stretch, two on the back.

The spring and fall races here have different characteristics during the races that become evident when looking at the past data. First off, the average start of the winner for each race is 8.5 in the last six spring races and 6.83 in the fall. Two of the last six fall races have seen one driver lead 300+ laps and in two others, two drivers led 150+ laps. The spring races have the laps leaders more spread out than that. If you listen to driver interviews during practice, they all say they expect the evening start time to lead to more of a single groove track than they have at Richmond in the spring race. Overall, the eventual winner at the track has come from the top-five starting spots 85% of the time and six drivers have at +6.0 positional differential in the last five races, including three Spring races.

Last but not least is this: expect the track to change in terms of speed and character from what you saw at practice. The practice and qualifying sessions were all run during the day, and thus the track temps will be different, as will the air temps. Those two changes can have drastic effects on the cars, just harken back to the previous races that have started during daylight and finished under the lights, cars were different in each half of the race.

DFS Playbook

Optimal Lineups