NASCAR DFS: Michigan Weekend Track Breakdown

Just about an hour outside of the Motor City lays the Irish Hills section of the Great Lakes State. Typically the Irish Hills are a peaceful, rolling, quaint, part of south central Michigan but that’s not the case this weekend. The Cup series shows up to crank out that horsepower around the 2-mile speedway known as the Michigan International Speedway. This is usually a showcase race for the american manufacturers with both GM and Ford headquartered in Detroit and Dearborn respectively and both about an hour from the track. Ford especially tends to put a lot of stock in winning at what it considers a testing ground track.

Michigan is a 2-mile D-shaped oval with banking that is 15 degrees in the corner and it’s known as one of the fastest tracks in NASCAR. It’s quite comparable to Auto Club and Kansas for similar layouts. Track position is really important at this track as the table below shows in terms of where winners have come from in the more than 100 Cup races run at the track.

Strategy Notes:

The races this weekend are shorter than typical Michigan races are given the double-header nature of the weekend. Normally the races are 400 miles, 200 laps, but this weekend both Saturday’s and Sunday’s races are 312 miles (500 kilometers) or 156 laps a piece. That means there will be a few less points to get in laps led and fastest laps and about 50 laps less for drivers to move up through the field. In terms of place differential here, over the last five races (dating back to Aug. 2017) there have been anywhere from 3-10 double-digit place differential drivers in each race and in this similar package last year there were five and 10 respectively.

Programming Notes

Because this is a two-race weekend the content will be a bit different. The podcast is already up and there will only be one, though strategy is given for both races. There will be just this one track breakdown that should hold up for both races. Two sets of rankings, projections, playbooks, and example lineups will be offered though as the starting spots for each race will change the value and viability of each driver over the weekend.

Core Drivers By Tiers

Tier 1 - Martin Truex Jr

• Truex has a couple of top-fives in the last four races, both happened last year

• He started P16 and P15 last year and finished P3 and P4 respectively last year

• MTJ finished P14 at Auto Club in March after starting P38 and has solid PD upside Saturday.

Tier 2 - Alex Bowman

• Bowman finished P10 in both races last year at this track

• He dominated at Auto Club earlier this year leading more than 100 laps and winning

• The price point is nice and he perhaps gets a bit less ownership given who’s around him in the grid

Tier 3 - Chris Buescher

• Buescher has a top-15 and another two top-20s in the last four races at Michigan

• He’s also been very solid at picking up PD recently this year and on bigger tracks

• The starting spot might scare some owners off which works out better when he hits

Contrarian Play - Austin Dillon

• DIllon has been very solid of late with nearly five spots of PD and three top-15s in the last five races this year

• He’s also put up similar numbers at Michigan to the roll he’s on right now

• He continues to start just inside the top-20 and finish just inside the top-15 and that brings in value for him

Fade - Matt Kenseth

• He’s been so bad this year that he actually spun out twice at New Hampshire, a track he previously dominated.

• Kenseth has a new crew chief this week and that might take some getting used to as they head down the stretch.

• The last time Kenseth was on track here it didn’t go well and this season he’s under 3x value on average on both sites.

Last Four Races At Michigan

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

Top-20 Drivers Over Last 8 Michigan Races

Top-20 Drivers At Similar Races

(Michigan, Auto Club, Kansas)

Momentum

These show the 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.

Driver

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

Team

Finish Spot 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 Michigan 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).

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

DFS Value Averages

This replaces the DFS Scoring Averages table that had been here. Instead, we have the DFS Value figures instead. We have taken their points scored over the last two and five races on each site and averaged those out and then divided that average by their salary divided by 1,000.

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4