NASCAR DFS: Pocono Organics 325 Track Breakdown

For the second time in two years, Pocono Raceway is getting a doubleheader for Cup races as they will race on Saturday and Sunday. The Tricky Triangle, as it's known colloquially, is the only triangular track in NASCAR and yes it's truly a triangle with three turns. All three of those corners are different in banking and radii as they are homages to three different current and past tracks in Indianapolis, Trenton, and Milwaukee.

It's a 2.5-mile track that is made up of two of the longest straightaways on the schedule with the front stretch being the longest and the Long Pond straight, between Turns 1 and 2, is the second-longest. The lap finishes with the "short chute" between Turns 2 and 3. It's also a wide track on the two long straights as the restarts here will see cars fan out to five or six wide as they try and get clean air or side draft off one another. There is a new combination of tires this week with the left sides having been used at Homestead and Darlington since 2019 and the right sides used at Auto Club in 2020. The tires will also be multi-zonal treads as well with a heat-absorbing zone and a grip zone to try and avoid some of the past tire issues here when they've melted or lost air because of the heat build up. A comparable track is Indianapolis Motor Speedway as they're both flat, 2.5-mile layouts.

Strategy Notes

As mentioned in the Discord channel and on the podcast, this is the only track breakdown for the week as Sunday's race can be simply based on this data and the eye test from Saturday's event. In the first race of the doubleheader last year there were four drivers that started outside the top-10 and finished in the top-10 while in the second race there were eight drivers starting outside the top-10 that finished inside the top-10 with the bulk of them starting between P18-P30. So with that said, we want to focus on PD in both races but in the first one, it’s more important to target laps led since the starting lineup was set by the qualifying formula which means the fastest cars of late are at the front of the pack to start. There are still 130 laps in the first race and 140 in the second so laps led can be a differentiator in bigger fields but since 2018, no one has topped 100 laps led in any race (even when they were 160 laps each until 2020) and only two drivers topped 70 led in any event.

Facts To Know

• Double-digit place differentials were achieved by at least six drivers in four of the last five races here.
• Laps Led are split pretty evenly amongst drivers over the last five races with only one race seeing more than one driver to lead more than 50.
• Over the last five races, we’ve seen only one driver win starting inside the top-five, though the second race last year was inverted.
• Four drivers have posted Avg. Driver Ratings over 100 in the last five races.
• Only five drivers have at least four top-10s in the last five races at Pocono.

The table below shows the number of drivers to reach each stat-type over the last five races similar races with Race 1 being the most recent.

For the tables below:
* The Category Rankings table: The numbers in the tables for each column represent that driver's rank amongst the other in the field for that particular stat. They are ranked with 1 being the best in each column.
* The DFS Scoring Table: Race 1 is the most recent race in the sample size with Race 5 being the earliest. For Nashville, we are using comparable races from this year's season as the five-race sample.