So while Xfinity and the Cup series head to Atlanta to have their tires eaten alive, the trucks head to Iowa for Friday night’s dirt race. I’m going to lead this article off saying THIS WILL LIKELY NOT HAVE UPDATES FOLLOWING QUALIFYING ON FRIDAY. This write-up is being done Thursday evening following practice and I have family in town this weekend. So during qualifying on Friday night I will be driving home from work and I won’t have much time to update the Playbook based on qualifying spots. However, you all are smart enough to identify the right plays. I will try to pop into the Discord channel, but don’t hold me to that. I’m doing three lineups for Friday’s truck race and that’s it. I’ll be attending both the Xfinity and Cup races this weekend so my involvement in the Discord channel will be minimal.
Now, on to Knoxville. We have 150 laps on tap for Friday night’s race and this will likely be a pretty quick race. It’s a half-mile track so they’re only running for 75 miles and you can run two-to-three laps per minute here. They will run stages in 40-50-60 segments. We have 105 dominator points available, but this is a dirt track and I assume we’ll lose dominator points to caution laps. Now we can pull data from the Bristol dirt race and previous races from Eldora. Those are 0.5-mile tracks but Knoxville is a much more shallow track with significantly less banking. Here are the results from Thursday’s practice session:
The starting order will be determined in four heats with ten cars in each heat. The heats were randomly drawn. If you win your heat you’re rewarded with ten points, second gets nine, third gets eight, and so on and so forth. You also earn a point based on how many spots you gain, but you do not lose a point if you go backwards. So if you start first in your heat and you win it, you get ten points. However, if you start tenth and finish fourth, you get seven points for finishing fourth and an additional six points for PD. So you’d have more points than the driver who won the heat. So, this is set up to benefit the drivers that have PD. If there are any ties, current team owner points will be the deciding factor. Remember, this is just for the qualifying heats. There are four heats each going for 15 laps. So I don’t even know how easy it’ll be for some drivers to move up. We could see one or two heats where there’s minimal movement.
Teams will not be allowed to change ties or add fuel during the stages. Pit stops will only occur during stage breaks. Each driver is required to make at least one pit stop in between stages and there are no races onto or off pit road. So the controlled pit stop rules are the same as previous dirt races. Now let’s take a look at some drivers to keep an eye on.
Driver Pool
You’ll see below I’m keeping a relatively tighter playing pool than usual. I’m just not going crazy with the bank roll Friday night so three lineups will limit my exposure on a lot of drivers. If I have time I’ll try to pop in the Discord tonight once the starting order is determined to offer up Core Plays and some extra drivers to consider.
Chase Briscoe ($11,000) – Briscoe’s a noteworthy dirt racer who was $11,000 for Bristol’s dirt race and started 33rd and logged a top five finish. Now he won’t have that kind of PD this week, but he’s still in play to win the race. His practice speed was outside the top ten, but I’m not reading too much into that. In addition to his great run at Bristol, he had great success at Eldora as well with a seventh-place finish in 2019 (93 laps led), he won in 2018, and finished third in 2017. He’s in the 04-truck that Cory Roper is typically in, but we know he can get the most out of this equipment.
Donny Schatz ($10,700) – Schatz is a living legend in the World of Outlaws. He’s a ten-time champion with over 300 career wins and plenty of experience at Knoxville. If we target road ringers on road courses then we should similarly target dirt track specialists at dirt tracks. It’s that easy. Schatz is in the 17-truck for DGR. If Kevin Harvick can move this truck up 15 spots on dirt, then Schatz should have no trouble as he flashed top five speed in practice.
Stewart Friesen ($10,400) – For good reason, Friesen is priced up this week. He was a popular play at BrisDirt despite the poor finish so he crushed plenty of my builds. But make no mistake about it, Friesen and his wife love riding around on dirt. Jessica Friesen will also be racing Friday night and she’s an okay cheaper option, but I don’t think I’ll have her in any of my builds. Similar to Briscoe, Stewart Friesen frequented the top of the leaderboard for the last three races at Eldora as he won back in 2019, finished third in 2018, and second in 2017.
Brian Brown ($10,000) – Brown gets the honor of driving the 51-truck for Kyle Busch Motorsports. Yes, he gets to drive Kyle Busch’s personal truck series ride. He has plenty of experience running Knoxville, just not a ton of experience running trucks. But just in the last two-to-three months alone he’s raced here at least five times. So, with the experience and practice he’s in play this week but I assume he’ll be popular so don’t go overboard with exposure.
Sheldon Creed ($9,700) I'm adding Creed as a late addition to the Playbook. Just not sure how much exposure I'll personally have. Two years ago at Eldora he finished as the runner-up and he led 38 laps as BrisDirt earlier this year and finished in the top five in the first two stages. In the third stage he started outside the top ten and struggled to get back into the top ten, plus he had to avoid some carnage that was happening all around him.
Matt Crafton ($9,100) This a weekend where I’ll be valuing veterans and drivers with dirt racing experience outside of just BrisDirt. Crafton is a veteran with solid dirt racing experience at Eldora. In seven races there he never finished worse than tenth and he even won the race back in 2017. Is he as exciting as Friesen or Briscoe? Probably not, but this is a solid play we need to be mindful of Friday night.
Todd Gilliland ($8,900) Todd has just been awesome this year. He only has one win, but in eight of his last nine races he’s finished eighth or better including a fourth-place finish at BrisDirt after he started 13th. He also finished fifth at Eldora back in 2019 and we’re getting him at a decent price tag given his last handful of races. His starting spot in his qualifying heat gives him a shot to move up and land a strong qualifying spot, but he’s in play for me no matter where he starts.
Grant Enfinger ($8,500) – This is a great price tag on Enfinger. Prices are wonky this week to favor dirt dogs, but Enfinger is about $1,000 cheaper than we get him most weeks and he was top ten in practice speeds. He also had a solid showing at BrisDirt and finished in the top four in the last three Eldora races. I hope he qualifies inside the top ten so others lay off for the lack of PD. Enfinger chalk is fine but I’d much rather prefer the ownership to be suppressed if he qualifies well.
Brett Moffit ($8,300) – Upon first review, Moffitt strikes me as more of a GPP play week. He’s run a part-time schedule this year in the Truck series but he was fast in practice and he finished top five at Eldora back in 2018. Now he does have some results where he went backward. That’s the nature of rostering Brett Moffitt in DFS.
Parker Price-Miller ($7,900) – I like the dirt racing pedigree, but I have my reservations regarding the equipment. He’s riding in the 3-truck for Jordan Anderson Racing and the results haven’t been great since Daytona to kick the year off for this team. But it’s a short 75-mile race so I am optimistic this truck can handle the bumps and bruises thrown it’s way Friday night.
Kyle Strickler ($7,000) – Similar to Price-Miller we’re getting a dirt racer stepping into inferior equipment. Strickler runs modifieds and late model cars on dirt and won the World of Outlaws late model series back in January. Again, the Youngs Motorsports equipment is a little worrisome, but Strickler was ticking off top 20 speed in practice.
Hailie Deegan ($6,800) – Deegan’s ownership will be very difficult to gauge this week. She did okay at BrisDirt as she moved up a few spots and grabbed a top 20 finish. However, she showed she was pretty fast in practice logging the fifth-fastest lap. In addition to that, Deegan finished second at the SRX race held at Knoville just a few weeks back. She finished as the runner-up to some guy named Tony Stewart. I guess that’s decent company to be in. Starting spot could dictate ownership, but I like the speed and the fact she raced here just a couple weeks ago.
Chase Purdy ($6,400) – Brace yourselves… But Chase Purdy might be figuring out this whole racing thing. Has he been elite? No, but compared to earlier in the season he’s made improvements. He grabbed back-to-back top 15 finishes at Pocono and Nashville and earlier this year at BrisDirt he started 23rd and finished 18th. He was sixth-fastest at practice, which should catch your attention as well. If you need a cheaper punt you can look to his teammate Jack Wood ($5,600) who flashed top 12 speed. However, I trust Purdy just a little bit more on Friday.