What’s this? We’re actually racing at Auto Club for once? That’s right folks, the cars are back in Fontana. It’s been since late-February 2020 that cars have been on the track at Auto Club and clearly it was a whole generation of car ago. This is a track that is either going to produce exciting racing and good passing chances or it’s going to be a bit of yarding by one driver. But that’s how it goes sometimes in the Cup series. If you’ve read the Track Breakdown for this week, you’ll see a ton strategy notes and data points to see how races have typically unfolded here the last several times they’ve raced in Fontana. The podcast also covers some good strategy notes as well.

While the cars are new this year, and that will most likely mean the drivers are still learning how to drive them here without issue, the package that’s on cars this week is similar to what they ran here from 2016-18. The low-downforce, high-horsepower that’s on the cars now means it’s close to what we saw with the 750-horsepower package from the last few years. In terms of tracks we can compare Auto Club to, Atlanta, Homestead, and Darlington are good for tire-wear and Kansas is good in terms of multiple grooves of racing.

We’re looking for drivers who can lead laps in this race as it’s typical to see one driver lead 100 or more laps over the course of the 200 lap races here. That being said, this isn’t going to be a normal race here on Sunday as the new cars are causing some serious learning curves for these drivers. There is little side force on the car and the shorter sidewalls on the new tires are all causing issues for cars from spinning out. Get ready for a lot of single-car spins and cautions on Sunday which will break up the race and might lead to more lead changes.

Average Points By Starting Spot

The following charts show the average points scored per starting spot over the last five races at Auto Club. Those averages are regardless of who was starting in that spot or why. It’s meant to show strategy for the track and not a hard-and-fast rule to expect that many points again.


Stacks

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