NASCAR DFS: Quaker State 400 Track Breakdown

Hotlanta will be living up to its moniker this weekend with temps near 90 and the humidity up into the 65-75 percent range. That means we’re getting a hot, slick, tough to drive, track for the second race at Atlanta this year. The first race was dominated by Kyle Larson with him leading nearly 270 laps but ultimately won by Ryan Blaney who ran him down late in the last stage as Larson’s tires wore down. Speaking of tire wear, Atlanta is infamous for it, well at least for now, and it’s a crucial part of race strategy and which drivers are able to do best over the long runs. Atlanta can be a track that we see long runs under green at, especially in the 550-horsepower package, and so the drivers that take the best care of their tires are usually the ones that are in contention late in the race and can make moves over those runs.

For those who may not remember, Atlanta is a 1.5-mile quad-oval with banking of 24 degrees in the corners and five degrees on the straightaways. It’s also the oldest surface in the Cup series, again only until this race ends though because they’ll be refinishing and reconfiguring it for 2022, and so the racing surface eats tires all day long. This race will be 100 miles shorter than the first race here this year, the Folds of Honor Quiktrip 500, and so it’ll be 267 laps rather than the 334 it was a few months ago.

Strategy Notes:

Laps led are in play this week as 267 laps is still plenty enough to have the dominator points factor into builds. Over the last five races here, only 28-percent of drivers to finish in the top-10 started outside the top-12 with four drivers pulling that off twice in that span. So while drivers have moved up to get into the top-10, most move up to finish just outside the top-10 with 40-percent of the spots 11-20 taken up by drivers who started outside the top-20 in the last five races.

Facts To Know

• Only four drivers in the field this week have driver averages over 100 in the last five Atlanta races.
• Five drivers that have raced multiple times in the last five races have posted 5.0 or better average PD marks.
• The average starting position of the last five winners has been 9.2 with the last three all coming from P9 or further back.
• In three of the last five races, there have been at least five drivers with double-digit PD in each race.
• Each of the last five races has seen a driver lead more than 100 laps, but in three of the five no other driver topped 50 laps led indicating it could be a single dominator.
• There are five drivers in the field that have finished in the top-10 four or more times in the last five races.
• Seven of the top-10 scoring starting spots for DK and six of the top-10 scoring spots for FD are starting spots of P1-P10.

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 Atlanta races for the data.