We’re back!! After the two-week break for the Olympics, the Cup cars are on the track in upstate New York for the first trip to The Glen in two years. Watkins Glen is one of the faster road courses that’s run in NASCAR and rather than having the hard braking sections like Road America a few races ago, it’s a more flowing layout over a shorter distance. There is a lot of elevation change over the course of a lap as well as the esses and the back half of the lap both climb hills.

The package this week is the standard 750-horsepower setup for road courses now though the tires this week are unique to Watkins Glen for all three series.

Strategy Notes

Like most road courses, this will be a relatively short race in terms of number of laps as there are just 90 being run on Sunday. What this means for strategy, as we discussed on the pod this week, which you should listen to, is that laps led per race aren’t a huge factor in the scoring this week. There are only 22.5 points for laps led on DK total and just over 60 total dominator points. In the last five races here at The Glen, only twice has a driver led more than 50 laps and that was one driver in each of the last two races. The typical way to score in DFS on road courses is to go after finish position and position differential and cash is typically a stronger play at road races as well. In that vein it’s important to note that just 42-percent of drivers to finish inside the top-10 over the last five races here started outside the top-12 in the grid. So while positions within the top-10 might shift during races, it’s typical that nearly six in 10 by races end will have started there in the first place.

Another thing we have to adjust down for is value marks. We typically refer to values of 5x for cash lineups and 6x for GPP builds to have a good shot at hitting money lines since an entire lineup of 5x drivers gives you 250 fantasy points. However, those can’t really be the threshold we judge plays off of this week because of the relatively few laps that are run. There are only three starting spots on DK in the last five races to average better than 41 FP (the threshold for hitting 5x (250/6 = 41.6) and none average better than 50 FP on FD (250/5 = 50) and less than five individual drivers in the field have averaged better than 5x on either site over the last five races here as well.

Facts To Know

  • Only four drivers in the field have averaged five or more spots of PD over the last four races at Watkins Glen; the same number that has averaged five or more spots of PD over the last 10 road courses.
  • 10 drivers have finished in the top-10 half of the time in the last 10 road races regardless of layout.
  • Over the last five Watkins Glen events, nearly the same number of drivers on average have double-digit fastest laps and/or 20 or more laps led. 2.4 have averaged the fast laps and 2.2 have averaged the laps led.
  • Five of the top-10 starting spots, based on average fantasy points scored on both sites, are P14-P21 in the grid.
  • Seven drivers in the field this week have averaged a finish inside the top-10 over at least the last three races here.
  • Eleven of the 37 drivers in the field this week haven’t run a Cup race at Watkins Glen but a few of those have run here in Xfinity.

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

 RaceRaceRaceRaceRace 
 12345AVG
Positive Place Differential181621222620.6
Six+ Place Differential Spots598131710.4
Double-Digit Place Differential3227125.2
Double-Digit Fast Laps232232.4
20+ Laps Led123232.2
50+ Laps Led110000.4
100+ Laps Led000000

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 Watkins Glen races for the data.