pocono cup series

Hopefully we get all 160 laps of racing at Pocono on Sunday.  It looks like there's a decent chance for rain and it's a huge track to dry with no lights.  So it might be a challenge if wet weather does hit.  Here's where I'm focused coming into Sunday:

• Kyle Busch is the top Dominator candidate.  It sounded like he was riding the splitter to begin final practice.  He came in quickly to fix that, and when he went back out, he put the best 10 lap sequence on the board.  He's won 2 of the last 3 Pocono races and he's led at least 50 laps in 3 of the last 4 Pocono races.
• Brad Keselowski had the 2nd best single lap time and 2nd best 10 lap sequence in final practice.  He crashed out of the last Pocono race, but prior to that he had finished in the Top 5 in 6 consecutive Pocono races.  This is one of the best teams at playing some of the unorthodox pit strategies that can win at Pocono.  The only downside of his recent performance is that he hasn't led many laps even when finishing well at Pocono.
• I don't know what to make of Truex.  He offers race winning potential with position difference upside.  But he's expensive and his practices on Friday were not great.  He was 10th in single lap time during both practices, but he did not make a 10 lap run so we have no read on his long run speed.  He was also quoted as saying he thinks this will be the toughest race yet to pass under green flag conditions.  That sounds to me like a driver who was not happy with how his car was handling in traffic.  He did win at Pocono last year and he has several Top 5s, but all those came when he was starting in the Top 5 as well.  It will be much more difficult to score that kind of finish from the 20th starting spot.
• There's a good group of drivers in the $8K-$9K range that have a lot of upside:
  • Ryan Blaney -- He has a win here and has finished in the Top 12 in 5 of the last 6 Pocono races.  6th in 10 lap average in final practice.
  • Kurt Busch -- A win, 4 Top 10s and no finishes outside the Top 20 in the last 6 Pocono races.
  • Alex Bowman -- 4 straight Top 10 finishes with 50 or more DK points in those four races.  Finished 3rd in the last Pocono race.
• Stenhouse at $7k is a good value.  I'm not sure what DK is doing with his pricing.  He was $7,300 at Kansas and finished a real solid 11th place.  Off that good run, his salary got dropped to $7,200 for Charlotte.  He finished 5th there last week.  So coming off two good runs, his salary drops again to $7k?  It's even more odd since he's been halfway decent at Pocono.  In the last six Pocono races, he has 3 Top 15 finishes and his worst finish is 22nd.
• No one is standing out to me on the lowest tier.  Guys like McDowell, Bubba Wallace and David Ragan are OK, but I really can't say you can count on anything more than maybe +4/5 position difference at best.  Depending who else you want on the upper tiers, I'm also fine with saving more and dropping to LaJoie.  LaJoie and Hemric are actually averaging the most DK points from this group over the last four races.  Hemric is too risky for me in cash games, so I'll probably settle on LaJoie.  Please don't expect another 12th place finish though.  We're looking for 25th or so as a reasonable expectation.