cup series at the glen

First and foremost, follow inspection issues on Sunday morning.  It's an impound weekend, so if a car fails inspection on Sunday, the qualifying time is disallowed and it gets an official starting spot in the rear.  Our last impound race was last week at Pocono where we saw nine cars fail inspection.  It turned every cash lineup upside down in the hours before the race.

If we have inspection failures Sunday, it will turn over lineups once again.  As it stands now, I really don't see a whole lot of good value plays.  Most cars seemed to qualify about where you would expect based on practice speeds, etc.  There are a few cars in the 14th-25th range that have +8 to +10 position difference upside.  But otherwise no one is sticking out as an obvious value play.  And I don't see a whole lot of upside out of any of the cheapest drivers starting from 26th on back.

With that background, let's get into some of the cars I'm focused on:

• The front runners are fairly obvious -- Chase Elliott, Kyle Busch and Martin Truex.  Honestly, you can't go wrong with any of them.
  • Elliott won here last year, led 52 laps and scored 26 fastest laps.  He had a race high 74 DK points.  Other than a blown motor earlier this year at Sonoma, he's been strong at most of the road courses.  Pending inspection, he'll start from pole Sunday and is quite likely to lead the bulk of the laps in Stage One at a minimum.
  • Kyle has been the most consistent road course guy over the last five years.  In the last ten road course races, Kyle has nine Top 8 finishes.  His only bad finish was at the Roval last year when he was involved in the massive crash during the restart with 6 laps to go.  But he was running in the Top 5 at the time of that crash.  Kyle had the best 5-lap and 10-lap average in final practice.  He also had the best 5-lap average in first practice.  (Elliott was second in 5-lap average both practices.)
  • While Kyle has been consistently excellent for many years, Truex has been even better the last two seasons.  In the last five road course races, Truex has three wins and a second place finish.  He would have had a fourth win at the Roval last year if not for Jimmie Johnson making contact and spinning them both heading to the checkered flag.  Truex has finished 1st and 2nd in the last two Watkins Glen races.
• On the cheap end, only three guys interest me:
  • Matt DiBenedetto -- Will start 20th, so there's a bit of risk here as his score would go deeply negative if he has a problem.  But he ran 4th in his first road course effort with the #95 team earlier this year at Sonoma.  And he has finishes of 17th, 13th and 4th in three of the last four road course races.  He was 3rd in single lap time and 13th in 5-lap average in final practice.  In first practice he was 15th in single lap time and 11th in 5-lap average.  So it looks like he has decent long run speed and that he qualified 8-10 spots worse then his practice speeds suggest he can run.
  • Ryan Preece -- I'm only interested because he starts 29th so offers limited downside.  He didn't have great practice speed and he wasn't great in his only other Cup Series road course race earlier this year in Sonoma -- he started 20th and finished 29th.  Not a ringing endorsement to be sure.
  • David Ragan -- Honestly, I prefer Ragan over Preece and will gladly take the $500 savings to go with it.  Ragan has finished 22nd, 26th, 16th and 20th in the last four road course races.  He ran 28th in both practices and was right next to Preece on the speed chart both times.  Given the salary savings, lower starting position and more consistent road course performance history, Ragan seems like the better bet to me.
• The middle range is where we could see some big value open up in the inspection process.  For now, here are the mid-tier/mid-pack guys of most interest to me:
  • Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney and Daniel Suarez all offer some decent position difference upside.
    • Logano in all honestly has struggled lately on the road courses.  A few years ago, he had a string of five straight Top 6 finishes on the road courses -- including a three year string of finishing 6th, 1st and 2nd at The Glen.  But in the last six road course races, he has only one Top 10 finish and has finished 24th and 37th at The Glen.  He was 12th in 5-lap average in final practice so he seems to have decent race speed.  But I'm not sure you can justify the $9,100 salary given his recent road course performance.
    • Blaney has finished 1st and 3rd in the last two road course races.  And he's been decent the last two years at The Glen with 8th and 12th place finishes.  He was 11th in single lap time and 9th in 5-lap average in final practice.  In first practice, he was 6th in single lap time and 5th in 5-lap average.  So he seems to have +8 to +10 position difference upside out of the 19th starting spot.
    • Suarez hasn't been particularly strong at the road courses with the exception of The Glen.  In his two Cup Series races here, he's finished 3rd and 4th.  He was 14th in single lap time and 5-lap average in final practice, so you'd think he has +5 position difference upside from the 18th starting spot.
  • Eric Jones carries a bit more risk starting 14th, but might have more upside compared to the Logano, Blaney and Suarez group.  The entire Joe Gibbs group was really fast in practice.  Jones himself was 11th in single lap time, 11th in 5-lap average and 8th in 10-lap average in final practice.  In his two Cup Series starts at The Glen, he finished 10th and 5th.  He finished 8th earlier this season at Sonoma.
  • The two other guys on the cheaper end of the middle tier that interest me most are Ryan Newman and Daniel Hemric.
    • Newman is Newman.  He'll be decent, will be a pain in the ass to pass and will probably finish in the Top 20.  In the last six road course races, he's never finished worse than 25th and he's gotten finishes as high as 11th and 7th in the two most recent road course races at The Roval and Sonoma earlier this year.
    • Hemric obviously isn't as established as Newman, but he ran really well at Sonoma earlier this year.  In that race he started 25th and finished 15th for 39 DK points.  In final practice, he was 16th in 5-lap average, so a similar finish isn't out of the question.