It’s Nashville week! This is the second year we have Nashville Superspeedway on the Cup schedule for the Ally 400 and there’s hope the Next Gen car improves the racing. Following the only off week of the 2022 NASCAR Cup schedule, this is one of the more unique layouts on the circuit to test drivers, and the new broadcast team of NBC. Let’s talk about the weekend schedule and weather for the Ally 400, the Nashville Superspeedway layout, the NASCAR DFS strategy for the Ally 400, and finally some stats to know for the week.

Ally 400 Weekend Schedule

We actually get a three-day show this weekend at Nashville. There are only a handful of those during the season.

Friday June 24: Cup practice 6:30 pm ET

TV: USA Network

Saturday June 25: Cup Qualifying 1:00 pm ET

TV: USA Network

Sunday June 26: Ally 400 5:00 pm ET

TV: NBC

Nashville Weather for Sunday

It’s the end of June in middle Tennessee. What else should we expect other than heat. I mean they love their chicken hot so why not the weather? Just how hot are we talking? It’ll be in the mid-to-upper-90s most of the weekend which will make the track slicker for sure and could cause more tire issues. The other problem though is that there is rain in the forecast for Sunday. Currently it’s forecast to start close to the scheduled race time, so be on the look out for the race time moving or in a worst-case scenario, being moved to Monday.

Nashville Superspeedway Track Layout

First things first, this track is not to be confused with the Nashville Fair Grounds in downtown Nashville which is a short track. This track is located southeast of Nashville in Gladeville, Tennessee and is close to an intermediate track. It’s 1.33 miles in length with banking of 14 degrees in the corners. That makes it a relatively flat track on the same level as Gateway and Phoenix. While the length is identical to Darlington, the steepness, shape, and surface aren’t a match really. Nashville has a fully concrete surface, much like Dover though the banking is steeper at the Monster Mile. NSS is a tri-oval layout which makes it similar to most of the intermediate tracks on the schedule as well. So what does that mean for what track we can compare to Nashville? Well, there’s a bit of Phoenix and Richmond along with Gateway and a bit of Darlington, Dover, and Kansas mixed in.

Goodyear Tire Notes for Ally 400

The tires that are being run this weekend at Nashville are ones we’ve seen before this year. This exact tire code combo was run previously at Texas — for the All-Star race — and at Kansas. The left sides specifically were also used at Dover while the rights were used at Charlotte, Darlington, Fontana, and Vegas separately. The tire wear here is fairly similar to most of the tracks that have used these tires and the teams should have a good book on them.

Ally 400 DFS Strategy

Last year’s race is really all we have to go on if we’re looking at track specific data. This is where the comparable tracks come in handy. We can take from those races what we need for DFS. I don’t fully trust last year’s strategy at this race since we had one team that ran away and hid from the field here, during the hottest stretch of his career. That’s not what’s happening this year. We also have a new car as well. The passing at tracks like this has been tough so far this year and it’s basically taken tire issues or pit road mishaps to gain spots in bunches. That is expected to be the case again on Sunday. We’ve also seen multiple laps led dominators at tracks like Nashville. If we look back at Phoenix, Richmond, Darlington, and Gateway to start, we’ll see that no one driver ran away with laps led, they were split by a few drivers a race. With 300 laps on tap for Sunday’s Ally 400, we should expect to see two key dominators and a third driver lead a good chunk as well. It’ll be key to pay attention to long-run speed at practice on Friday evening for the drivers that can get out and hold speed and manage tires.

Facts To Know For Nashville

  • Five drivers had Driver Ratings over 100 in last year’s race and all five finished in the top-six spots in the finishing order.
  • The track will be using the Tire Dragon and Resin in the same spots as last year for entry/exit of corners but has widened it closer to the wall.
  • Over the last seven similar races, there’s only four drivers in the field with five or more top-10s in that span.
  • In that same span, only two drivers have Driver Ratings over 100.
  • Last year’s Ally 400 had 11 cautions for 60 laps equalling 20-percent of the race run under yellow.
  • There are only four drivers in the field this week with average PD marks over six spots a race in the last seven similar races.

For the tables below:

The DFS Scoring Table: Race 1 is the most recent race in the sample size with Race 5 being the earliest. We are using the Last 5 similar races this year for the data.

The Similar Races table: The data is comprised of stats from the last 7 races at Nashville, Phoenix, Richmond, Kansas, Dover, Darlington, and Gateway.