Food City Dirt Race NASCAR DFS Playbook

The Food City Dirt Race is back this year as Bristol Motor Speedway covered their famed racing surface in some Tennessee dirt. Last year’s edition of this race was a bit chaotic to put it nicely. That doesn’t appear to be the case for this weekend. They’ve made some significant changes to the track and the schedule that should make this race a lot more enjoyable for DFS than last year’s mild disaster. It was clear at practice that while the dirt racers had an advantage over time, they didn’t have as big of one as we’d initially thought. In the final practice in fact, all cars were within .55 seconds of each other’s single-lap speeds. So far, the reaction to the track this year has been mostly positive from the drivers and teams alike.

DFS Strategy

That being said, there is still an element of chaos to this race and things won’t necessarily go as we’d expect them to even with as many dirt racing experts in the field as we have for this one. In terms of building lineups, we’re going to be looking for one laps led dominator for this one with another driver that can get a chunk led. The others will be drivers that can finish highly and/or pick up position differential. At least for DraftKings. For FanDuel, we’re banking on drivers finishing highly as our main source of points since laps led points aren’t terribly numerous. We can take a few things from last year’s race in terms of how many drivers should finish on the lead lap; roughly half the field. It’s still a short track after all and drivers that aren’t comfy on dirt will just be wishing for the race to end and be easy targets for being lapped. The other thing we should take from last year is that banking on any one driver too much is a major problem for DFS. This isn’t fully Talladega or Daytona territory, but it’s close.

A few things that effected last year’s race that shouldn’t be a problem this year. Firstly, overheating shouldn’t be a problem this year because of adjustments made to the grills/radiators of the cars. There are extra filters and guards over that part of the cars that should filter out the dirt or mud better. Secondly, the infamous single-file restarts for the last third of the race. That shouldn’t be a problem this year either. From all accounts the track is in far better condition this year in terms of reduced dust and it’ll be a night race meaning they can keep moisture in the track better. Thirdly, there are grated mud flaps on the rear tires of the cars which should reduce the dust clouds from forming too.

Practice Speeds To Qualifying

We have the return of my famed Practice-To-Qualifying table that has popped up sporadically over the last couple of seasons. Some of you may have seen it before, but for those that haven’t or need a refresher. This table shows not only where the drivers qualified but also where their speeds ranked for each practice and then combined practice ranks. The Prac 2 and Prac 3 columns are single-lap ranks and the 10-lap columns are their 10-lap average ranks for those sessions. The combined practice column takes the two single-lap speeds, averages them together and then reranks among the other drivers in the field. This, for the most part gives you a decent idea of who might be a in a spot to move up and who might be a driver to avoid.

Stacks

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