NASCAR DFS: Jockey Made in America 250 Track Breakdown

For the first time in 65 years, the top level of NASCAR is headed to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin this weekend to race at Road America. Widely considered one of the best road courses in the world, it’s been a long-time staple of series like IMSA and Indy and other touring series, and since 2010 Xfinity has raced there once a year as well. So unlike the other road courses that have been run on this season, 28 of the 40 Cup drivers in the field this weekend have experience here in the lower series and a few are doing double-duty this weekend as well to get more track time.

For those unfamiliar with the track, it’s a 14-turn, 4.048-mile layout that has quite a bit of elevation change as it was built on the rolling hills of the area and that includes a long, uphill, front stretch and pit road. There is a good mix of short, fast corners, winding ones, and sharp corners that require heavy braking zones leading into them. I have included a video of a lap around the track, though, in an IMSA car, it’ll give a good idea of what braking zones and the general flow of a lap is like. There will also be practice and qualifying this weekend as well which will give on-track time to dial things in.

This is another short race, and even shorter than most road races, at just 62 laps for the Cup race with stages of 14, 15, 33 laps. With a strong chance of cautions multiple times as drivers haven’t been on this track in a while potentially, nor have they been on it with this much horsepower, and there being sand pits as run-off areas that cars can get stuck in, laps led might not be that big of a factor this week. The other thing to pay attention to is pit strategy and how the stages get broken up by it which is likely to shuffle things around quite a bit. The data in the tables below is based on the last five and 10 road courses overall for Cup. As for the tires this week, they are the same tires as were used, dry, for COTA earlier this year. Take a listen to the podcast this week for more in-depth strategy talk and more talk on Xfinity histories for drivers.

Facts To Know

• 28 of the 40 drivers in the Cup field this week have raced at Road America in Xfinity
• Michael McDowell, Ross Chastain, Josh Bilicki all lead the way with five races each in Xfinity
• Four drivers this week have a Driver Rating over 100 in the last five road races (three of which were this year)
• Three drivers in the field have finished in the top-10 at least four times in the last five road races
• Eight drivers have an average PD of at least five over the last five road races
• Only once in the last five road races has more than one driver led over 20 laps in a single race.

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. We are using the Last 5 road races for the data.