NASCAR By The Numbers: Food City 500
It’s Bristol Baby! By far my favorite track, we head to Bristol Motor Speedway for the Food City 500 (Tune In: Sunday 1pm EST on FOX).
If you’ve never watched the Bristol race before, you’re in for one of the best races of the season. With this short track, there is no such thing as a safe option. This race is 500 laps, so you’ll want to target lap leaders, and still nail your place differential drivers.
Carl Edwards – $9,900 – Starting 1st – If there’s one thing we learned with the XFINITY race, it’s very hard to pass the leader. The outside line is so fast here, and it was very tough to pass on the inside in that race. Edwards has massive upside this weekend, and should lead a lot of laps here. Happy Hour practice, Edwards has the third fastest 10-lap average. Edwards has led at least 74 laps in four of the last five races here. I think he’s a guy that you can target in all formats.
Denny Hamlin – $9,600 – Starting 4th – I’m all about the JGR stack this weekend, and I like Hamlin a little more than Kenseth. The discount is nice, and Hamlin showed a lot of speed in that final practice. Hamlin has been really good, or really bad here in the last ten races. He has four top tens with a win, and six finishes outside of the top twenty. I’m expecting a really good run here, and I think Joe Gibbs Racing dominates this weekend.
Matt Kenseth – $10,000 – Starting 2th – The season has been filled with bad breaks for Kenseth. Kenseth won this race last spring, and he’s won two of the last five races here. He has upside this weekend, but I would only play him in a GPP. He has engine issues last August, but he’s led at least 25 laps in eight of the last nine races here. Kenseth has the highest driver rating among active drivers here. Like I said before, I’m all about the JGR stack this weekend, the problem is picking the right three drivers.
Kyle Larson – $7,600 – Starting 25th – Larson is one of my favorite plays this weekend, and I think he’s playable in all formats. Larson was involved in a wreck in August, but has finished 12th or better in three of his four races here. He looked great in the XFINITY race, and looked really fast in final practice. He had the fastest 10-lap run in final practice on Saturday. Larson comes from a short-track background, and I really like him this weekend.
Danica Patrick – $6,500 – Starting 33rd – I will say, I liked Danica a lot more before her run in with Denny Hamlin in second practice. They fixed the car in between practices, but they struggled to find speed in the final practice. She’s a very risky play this weekend, but she has the potential to score a good amount of place differential points. She has an average finish of 23.43 over seven-career races here, and she scored her only top ten in the April of last year.
I still like all three picks from the Daily Fantasy Pitstop. Don’t forget, we will have a special NASCAR periscope LIVE from Bristol around 11:30am EST on the RotoGrinders twitter.