Bristol Cup

Looking forward to Bristol on Sunday. Bets did pretty well in the Charlotte 2 race. Fantasy was a slight loss with Bowman running into the wall. Bristol stuff coming by Saturday night. 

Sunday Update
Two early competition cautions is bad for Brad Keselowski as it increases the risk he doesn't lead enough and/or gets shuffled back in the pack. Makes the position difference guys a bit more interesting.

Saturday Night
Here we go. At last, the weather looks great for 500 laps at Bristol on Sunday. With the increased number of laps, we increase the laps led and fastest laps points and also the multiples we are looking for from our drivers. Whereas we usually look for a 5x return on salary, we're looking for something more in the 6x-7x return at Bristol. We also have to consider the increased risks at Bristol. The track is so short that leaders can very easily get caught up in wrecks like happened with Ryan Blaney two years ago. And any mistakes on pit road are magnified. If you get a penalty on a green flag stop, you're going multiple laps down. Same for a loose wheel.

I'm going to talk about a few key decision points that will really dictate where your roster goes in a cash game setting.

• (1) Do I pay up for Jimmie Johnson and/or Clint Bowyer with their relatively safe floor and position difference upside? I don't think that's the best use of salary. No doubt they both have Top 10 potential. And this is one of Clint's best race tracks. However, we also have a number of competent drivers starting much further back in the field that offer a lot of position difference upside at a much cheaper salary. Guys like Bubba Wallace, Christopher Bell, Ty Dillon and Ryan Preece all offer Top 20-25 and +10 position difference upside. Another problem you could run into when using Johnson and/or Bowyer is that it really limits your ability to get two dominators in your lineup who you expect to lead laps and run fastest laps. Now, taking this type of more conservative approach did work in the last race at Charlotte. So, if you want to play it real safe, it could work. But, with the sheer number of laps led and fastest laps points out there, it's hard to see a play it safe approach where you roster only one dominator working this week unless you happen to hit on the dominator who really smashes and leads for several hundred laps.
• (2) Do I take Keselowski starting from pole? For this one, I'm saying yes. For one thing, the salary of $9,100 is very reasonable. He's very likely to lead laps and run fastest laps at the beginning of the race. He is usually fast at Bristol - although he has run into a few issues there in recent years that have resulted in poor finishes despite having a good car. And, it's worth remembering he had one of, if not the, best car at Phoenix earlier this year. That track is much different, but it is the one and only time this year the teams have run the lower down force and higher HP package they'll be running at Bristol on Sunday.

Where you go with those two decisions is going to drive a lot of what you can do with the rest of your roster. A few other points of note:

• Eric Jones is just too cheap. This is a top end Joe Gibbs Racing car for $7k. It's just a bad pricing error. Eric has led laps and run fastest laps here in the very same car. And he's got position difference upside from 15th. Even if he just moved up to 12th place, that would be a minimum of 35 points plus whatever fastest laps he might get. Barring some issue, it's very likely he pays off this salary and he's got the potential to 8X or 9x it.
• On the real high end of things, it's a struggle to make a decision if you want to take Kyle Busch or Kevin Harvick. No doubt that Kyle has been awesome at Bristol in the past. But he's also been awesome at Charlotte in the past and he was a real disappointment there the last two races. The same is true of Phoenix. He's been a beast there the last three seasons, but he was off and didn't lead a lap there in Spring. I'll repeat something I said before Charlotte -- Kyle has not led a single lap in the seven races since Daytona and he's only run a total of 40 fastest laps in those races. So you're talking about a grand total of 20 dominator points over the course of seven races. Something is off and they haven't fixed it yet. On the flip side, Harvick has been awesome this year. He was very good in this race package at Phoenix earlier this year. And he has historically been very solid at Bristol. While it should surprise no one if Kyle busts out on Sunday, Kevin is the safer play right now. 

Here are a few bets I'm playing this weekend. Not all that much that I like.

• Keselowski +250 Kyle Busch
• Newman +160 Kenseth
• A. Dillon +130 Newman
• Kurt Busch +1800 to win