The race this weekend at Phoenix Raceway continues the trend of races in which track position is king throughout the race. If a driver is up front they can get the clean air to stay up front and potentially create a break away situation like we’ve seen at Homestead and Vegas in the past two weeks. In fact, 64-percent of top-10 finishes in the last five combined Phoenix races have started in the top-12 starting spots. So starting up front is the key to staying up front here though drivers can move up further back in the pack until they hit a certain point in the field. There have been several drivers to move up at least six spots in each of the last five races, though just three average that many across the last four. You’ll see in the chart below, that fastest laps are pretty well spread out here but laps led can be a category to target as in each of the last five races at least one driver has led 100 or more laps a race except for once.
Again check out the Playbook, Podcast, Track Breakdown, and DFS Rankings for more strategy notes and feel on plays.
For DraftKings we’re looking for drivers to move up some and then to fill in with a laps led guy or two for cash and for GPPs we want similar builds but we can target guys who have shown well at times here but have less consistent records to rely on while still focusing on laps led and fastest laps guys.
For FanDuel the best way to go about this weekend’s race is to focus on the drivers starting in the top-15 or top-20 who can move up a bit or hold their spots because finish position will be the key stat once more. There are 31.2 points this week for laps led and that will make a difference if you have a majority of them on your roster but the bigger difference will be locking in drivers who will finish highly to get a great base of points going on your roster.
Race 1 is the most recent at Phoenix.
| Race | Race | Race | Race | Race | ||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | AVG | |
| Positive Place Differential | 18 | 22 | 22 | 20 | 24 | 21.2 |
| Six+ Place Differential Spots | 6 | 13 | 6 | 11 | 20 | 11.2 |
| Double-Digit Place Differential | 3 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 11 | 4.6 |
| Double-Digit Fast Laps | 6 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 6.6 |
| 20+ Laps Led | 2 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 3.2 |
| 50+ Laps Led | 2 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2.8 |
| 100+ Laps Led | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Again the first row for each site is Cash cores and the second is GPP core plays.
| Position | Top Tier | Mid-Tier | Value-Tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| {{position.position.alias}} | {{position.top.name}} | {{position.mid.name}} | {{position.value.name}} |