auto club xfinity

The key question again this week is whether to roster Kyle Busch at $15,000.  As of now, I'm planning to do that and here's why:

• Cup drivers have dominated the recent Auto Club Xfinity races.  Last year, Joey Logano was the only top Cup driver in the race.  He started from 2nd and led 139 laps on the way to a dominant victory.  He also had 45 fastest laps -- more than twice the nearest competitor.  In 2017, Logano, Kyle Larson and Kyle Busch combined to lead 146 of 150 laps and scored 82 fastest laps compared to 18 for the rest of the field.  In 2016, Kyle Busch led 133 of 150 laps and had by the far the most fastest laps.  And in 2015, Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin combined to lead 133 laps.
• This week, Kyle Busch and Ryan Preece are the only Cup drivers in the Xfinity race.  Preece is in the #8 JR Motorsports car, so he's in top notch equipment.  I expect we'll see the pattern of Cup driver dominance continue.
• The next question is how to build a competitive lineup when Busch eats $15K of your salary cap.  First, there's a good group of drivers/cars starting with Preece at $9,900 and going down to Michael Annett at $7,800.  You should be able to grab two of them based on the best combined value of driver/car strength and starting spot.  My pre-qualifying favorites are Preece and Ryan Sieg.
• A quick note on Sieg, throw out all of his prior statistics.  His team bought essentially brand new equipment from RCR in the off season.  So he's running in very competitive equipment and is hanging with the big boys each week now.  His price is rising, but $8K is still a decent value depending on starting spot.
• On the under $7,000 salary saver end of things, I'll be watching Jeremy Clements, Brandon Brown, Josh Williams, Timmy Hill, Bayley Currey, Matt Mills and Caesar Bacarella.  Especially as you get to the end of the list, the speed will not be there.  But those teams/drivers usually try to finish the race and don't enter with the plan to start and park the car at some point.
• As with last week, be prepared to pivot if, for some reason, a host of Xfinity regulars start at the back of the field.  There should be no reason for that to happen since the weather should be fine.  Only some kind of inspection issue might lead to that outcome.
• Auto Club is very similar to Atlanta in that it is a very rough track that just eats up tires.  I think that's one reason the Cup guys dominate here.  They are better equipped to deal with the extreme tire fall off we'll see on a longer run.  I also mention that because there may be some value in looking back at who ran well in Atlanta a few weeks ago.  It will be a warm sunny day at Auto Club -- not a cold rainy day like we had for the Atlanta race -- but some parallels remain.  Ryan Preece was the only Cup guy in the Atlanta race.  He finished 7th and Christopher Bell dominated the race, leading 142 laps.  Tyler Reddick also ran well.  He finished 5th with a +7 position difference, 30 fastest laps and 9 laps led.