NASCAR DFS: Super Start Batteries 400 Track Breakdown

Mid-week racing is back! This week we have a Thursday night points race at Kansas Speedway as we enter the home stretch before the playoffs start in early September. This track sees two races a year with the first, the one this race is making up for, in May prior to the All-Star break while the other one is still to come in October.

This is a 1.5-mile track that is still fairly new to the NASCAR schedule having started hosting race in the early 2000s. In that time though it has quickly become one of the more favorite tracks of the drivers because of its wide racing surface and multiple grooves that tend to come in during the races allowing for different lines to be run and moves to be made. The banking here is progressive in the corners, meaning that depending on where on the track the driver is, there is a different amount of banking. The tilt ranges from 17 degrees by the apron up to 20 degrees by the outer wall and those three degrees make a difference as to how much speed and momentum a driver can carry through the corners. The last few races they have applied PJ1, or traction compound, to the track to help the multiple grooves show up sooner in the race.

Kansas has also been a spot where the possibility of pile-up crashes exists and there have been some bad crashes here in the last few years. On average in the last two years there have been 5.8 cautions a race with two of the four having seven each. Over the last five years, the average of cautions has been 7.8 per race, though more in the range of six should be expected on Thursday.

The wins by manufacturers have been split pretty evenly here over the last 10 races (five years) with Toyota having a slight edge. However, the success here for Toyota is more recent as, of the 28 races run in the Cup series on this track, they have six total wins here with four of those coming in the last 10 races, and Chevrolet totaling 12 wins at the track.

Strategy Notes

As the table above shows, starting up front here has been good for winning the race in general, but winners here can come from more places than most and that’s been shown off in the last five races here as there have been two winners from the pole, a winner from P4, P13, and last fall, P23. Last year’s races showed that drivers can move up pretty well here with at least eight drivers achieving double-digit PD in each race, though there were some qualifying issues that accounted for that. Typically though at least five drivers have moved up at least 10 spots throughout the races at Kansas. In terms of dominator points, in the last five races, we’ve seen one driver lead at least 100 laps in each and then a second driver lead between 60-90 in each as well, so safe to say that a two-dominator strategy will be in play on Thursday. The May race at Kansas is typically a night race like the one on Thursday will be.

This track breakdown will be similar to the one for Pocono since the salaries aren’t out as of the writing of this, the tiers will be broken down into groups of 10 drivers that are achieved by sorting the stats for the tables based on several categories of performance.

Core Drivers To Watch

Chase Elliott

• In the last five races here, his worst finish is P12 including a win in October of 2018

• He’s picked up at least five spots of PD in each of those races and three times picked up between 10-12 spots.

• Elliott ranks fifth in driver rating over the last eight races at Kansas

Erik Jones

• Jones has finished P7 or better in each of the last four races here

• In the last 20 similar races, Jones has 10 top-10s

• Jones has shown solid speed over the last few races this season

Clint Bowyer

• It’s Bowyer’s home track and he’s been solid here with a positive 7.2 PD mark

• He finished P5 and P8 in the two races last year in this package.

• Bowyer has shown top-11 Green Flag speed in five of the last eight 1.5-mile tracks this year.

Contrarian - Ryan Blaney

• This might seem odd to say Blaney is a contrarian play but his history here isn’t great

• He has an average finish of 24.3 in the last four races with only one finish in the top-20

• Blaney has dominated at 1.5-mile tracks this season and was again at Texas before getting trapped back in the pack late in the race.

Fade - Ryan Newman

• At Kansas, he’s made a habit of going backward with a -12.7 PD mark in the last four races

• Only one top-15 in the last four races and only three in the last eight races with a -11.1 PD mark

• The average start in those spans match his average start in the last five races this season and in those races this year he’s also going backward 5.2 spots a race.

Last Four Races at Kansas

Top-10

Drivers 11-20

Drivers 21-30

Drivers 31-40

Top-20 Drivers Over Last Eight Races at Kansas

Top-20 Drivers At Similar Races

(Kansas, Kentucky, Las Vegas, Chicagoland, Homestead)

Momentum

The driver and team momentum tables have been made to match the last four and eight race tables with range of finish instead of the prior wins, top-fives, top-10s, and top-15 columns. They will also show those stats for the last five races of this season prior to the current week’s race to show you who’s been hot and who’s been cold.

Drivers

Top-10

Drivers 11-20

Drivers 21-30

Drivers 31-40

Team

Finish Ranges By Starting Spot Ranges

This table shows where the ranges of starting spots have finished regardless of driver in those spots over the last four Kansas races. The left-hand column shows the starting spots in groups of five and the columns going across show the finish spots in groups of five up to outside the top-20.

Weekly Rankings

Race Hist, Recent Form, Track Hist, Type Hist are all ranked on average finish position over the last four races at the track, five races this season, eight races at this track, and similar races respectively. The Avg. Rating and Top-15 % columns are ranked on those categories in the last four races at this track. The L8 PD column ranks the position differential over the last eight races from best (most positive) to worst (most negative).

Top-10

Drivers 11-20

Drivers 21-30

Drivers 31-40