Here are my final driver rankings for this weekend’s race at Dover. I compiled them by crunching the practice and qualifying data from Dover Friday and Saturday, and then melding it with the historical data:
Here are my mid-week driver rankings for this week’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Dover. I compiled them by crunching the loop, practice and qualifying data for the 2011 races at Dover and Bristol:
Here are my final driver rankings for tonight’s race at Richmond. I compiled them by crunching the practice data from Dover yesterday, and then melding it with the historical data:
Here are my mid-week driver rankings for this week’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Dover, Del. I compiled them by crunching the loop, practice and qualifying data for the fall 2010 race at Dover, the March 2011 race at Bristol and last week’s race at Darlington:
Kenseth and Bowyer talk during practice Friday. Both should run up front today in the race. (Photo Jim McIsaac/Getty Images for NASCAR)
The Sprint Cup teams got in all three practices and qualifying at Dover under warm, sunny skies, and that’s good for predictability because it gives us lots of data to review. Today’s forecast on Weather.com calls for cooler weather during the race today, however, and that reduces the value of all that warm-weather data somewhat because the cars will behave a little differently on a cool track than a warm track.
Two more factors boost predictability. First, according to the Goodyear tire notes on Jayski.com, the teams are running the same tires they did in the May race, and that helps because it allows the teams to lean heavily on their notes from the May race. Finally, we already had solid historical data to review prior to yesterday’s preliminaries, which I discussed in my mid-week preview.
Overall, I rate predictability a little above average today. Fantasy players can therefore be a bit aggressive with start saving (though it’s questionable if you should still be saving starts this late in the season), and bettors can consider taking slightly tighter lines than normal. Continue reading
Kyle Busch led six times at Dover this spring, and Jimmie Johnson led eight. (Photo Todd Warshaw/Getty Images)
The Sprint Cup series returns to Dover, Del., this week for a run on Dover International Speedway, a 1 mile, steep-banked, concrete track known as The Monster Mile. We should enjoy decent predictability this weekend because 1) we have solid 2010 practice, qualifying and race data to review from Dover and two other shortish-banked tracks, Bristol and Darlington, and 2) Weather.com Dover will receive dry, warm weather on Friday and Saturday, with a chance of showers on Sunday.
Handicapping Dover
I examined the practice, qualifying and race data from all the 2010 races at Dover, Bristol and Darlington to produce historical rankings. Then I looked at the same data for just the Dover race in May, and I merged those results with the historical rankings, thereby making the rankings much more Dover-specific.
I tweaked those initial rankings with the opinions of other online NASCAR handicappers and my own race-recap notes from the May Dover race to come up with this top 13: Continue reading
Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson traded the lead numerous times on Sunday at Dover. (Photo Todd Warshaw/Getty Images)
My top picks were about as fast as I figured they’d be at Dover on Sunday, although several drivers and teams committed bonehead blunders that doomed their day, and bad luck struck a few others.
1. Kyle Busch: The 18 was the dominant car on short runs early on, and as the laps wound down, it appeared Busch possibly had the #1 car on long runs, too. He cruised to victory after the other top car, the 48, committed a grievous foul on pit road with 30-ish laps to go, spoiling what would’ve been a terrific duel to the finish line.
2. Jimmie Johnson: The 48 was the other top car, but as noted above, Johnson incurred a pit-road penalty on the final stop, and he finished in the teens instead of first or second.
3. Clint Bowyer: It appeared Bowyer had at least a top-5 car, but a pit-road incident sank his chances of finishing that high (the jack got stuck under his car, and he dragged it around the track for a lap). Continue reading
Kyle Busch is the man so far this weekend at Dover. He's pictured here with fiance Samantha Sarcinella prior to the truck race. (Photo Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)
Practice and qualifying at Dover on Friday and Saturday produced several surprises in the ratings, with some preliminary favorites looking slow and a few off-the-radar guys vaulting their way up the charts. Before I get to the revised rankings, though, let’s quickly revisit two important predictability factors for the race.
The Weather
Weather has been pretty much a non-factor in the preliminaries, and according to Weather.com at press time, it should remain a non-factor on Sunday.
Tires
According to the Goodyear Tire Notes posted on Jayski.com, the teams are running a new left-side tire this weekend, while the right-side tire remains the same. This change decreases race predictability a bit and could be part of the reason the driver rankings underwent such a shuffling during the preliminaries. Continue reading
Casey Mears (Photo Sam Greenwood/Getty Images for NASCAR)
Several news outlets are reporting Casey Mears will drive the 83 this weekend because regular driver Brian Vickers has been hospitalized with an undisclosed medical condition (here’s a link to the Fox News story). For you Yahoo! Fantasy NASCAR players, this is significant because Mears will now have relatively strong equipment in Group C, giving you a good alternative to regulars such as A.J. Allmendinger, Sam Hornish Jr., Scott Speed and Paul Menard.
Jimmie Johnson takes the checkered flag in last year's spring race at Dover. (Photo Nick Laham/Getty Images)
The Sprint Cup series moves to Dover, Del., this week for a run on Dover International Speedway, a 1 mile, steep-banked, concrete track known as The Monster Mile. We should enjoy decent predictability this weekend for several reasons. First, Dover hosted two Sprint Cup races last year, and the teams followed the typical pre-race schedule during both: practice and then qualifying on Friday, and then two more practices on Saturday. This schedule gives us solid total-speed data on the Practice 1 and qualifying speed charts, and excellent race-trim data on the Practice 2 and Happy Hour speed charts.
In addition to the 2009 Dover data, we can fine-tune our driver evaluations with the historical data from recent races at Bristol and Darlington. These tracks are far from Dover copies, of course, but they do share somewhat similar banking and length, so drivers and setups tend to perform somewhat similarly across them.
Finally, at press time Weather.com says scattered thunderstorms might visit Dover on Friday, but that Saturday and Sunday should feature partly cloudy skies with consistent mid-70s temperatures. At the least, then, we should get solid race-trim data on Saturday, and the chances of a rain stoppage on Sunday seem very low. Continue reading
