Here are my final driver rankings for today’s race at Michigan. I compiled them by crunching the practice and qualifying data from Michigan on Friday and Saturday, and then melding it with the historical data:
Here are my early driver rankings for this week’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Michigan. I compiled them by crunching:
The results:
Here are my final driver rankings for today’s race at Michigan. I compiled them by crunching the practice and qualifying data from Michigan on Friday and Saturday, and then melding it with the historical data:
Here are my early driver rankings for this week’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Michigan. I compiled them by crunching:
The results:
Here are my final driver rankings for this weekend’s race at Michigan. I compiled them by crunching the practice and qualifying data from Michigan 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 the big-flat track in Michigan. I compiled them by crunching the loop, practice and qualifying data for the 2011 races at Michigan, Fontana, Kansas and Kentucky:
Here are my final driver rankings for Sunday’s race at Michigan. I compiled them by crunching the practice and qualifying data from Michigan Friday and Saturday, and then melding it with the loop, practice and qualifying data from the Fontana and Kansas race this year, the fall 2010 race at Fontana and the August 2010 race at Michigan:
Kevin Harvick passes Tony Stewart during a restart while the field runs five-wide behind them. (Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)
My picks didn’t fare too well at Michigan on Sunday:
Note: Pit tactics came into play Sunday during a late caution. Some teams took four tires, some took two and Denny Hamlin didn’t pit at all. He turned that track position into a 2nd place finish.
Kasey Kahne nabbed the pole in qualifying.
As expected, the NASCAR Sprint Cup teams got in all three practices and qualifying Friday and Saturday at Michigan International Speedway (MIS), giving those of us handicapping NASCAR or playing fantasy NASCAR a substantial amount of pre-race data to examine. In addition, according to the Goodyear Tire Notes posted on Jayski’s Michigan Race Info page, the teams are running the same right- and left-side tires at MIS this week as they did in the June MIS race, giving an extra boost to race predictability.
However, the weather forecast for MIS at Weather.com calls for a 10–20% chance of scattered thunderstorms late Sunday morning and continuing through the afternoon, and that hurts predictability a bit because rain would alter the racing surface from what the teams have seen so far this week, and it could also give us a wild-card winner via a rain stoppage. Plus, as I noted in my race preview, the odds fuel-mileage tactics will come into play at MIS are elevated because the big, wide nature of this track generally produces fewer caution flags than most other tracks on the circuit.
So, I still rate tomorrow’s race predictability at average, or maybe even a tick below. I therefore will look to save starts where possible on my Yahoo! fantasy team, and I recommend bettors take a straight-forward approach to the betting lines. Continue reading
Kurt Busch started on the pole at MIS in June. (Photo Chris Trotman/Getty Images)
The NASCAR Sprint Cup series heads back to Michigan International Speedway (MIS) this week for another run on the 2-mile, D-shaped track with 18 degrees of banking. The series just raced at MIS in June, so fantasy NASCAR players and handicappers have very recent data to review, greatly bolstering predictability. In addition, Weather.com suggests at press time that the weather will be kind to the race teams on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so we should get solid practice and qualifying data to review, and there’s little chance rain will mess with the race itself.
Sunday’s race enjoys above-average predictability then, right? No. Since the June race, I’ve thought long and hard about the races on the really big tracks, and I’ve concluded the chances fuel-mileage tactics will come into play are fairly high at these venues. Such tactics can turn a race’s running order upside down. Continue reading