Richmond Trucks

UPDATES IN BOLD BELOW

My two cash game locks are Kyle Busch and Timmy Hill.

• With Kyle, we've got 250 laps in this race on Saturday, so that gives him plenty of time to rack up the laps led and fastest laps points that he'll need to pay off the salary. He's by far the best driver in the race with by far the most experience at this track. If he leads 100 laps, runs 50 fastest laps and wins the race (all of which are very reasonable projections), he'll score 103.5 DK points and be well over 6x his salary. For me, there's just too much potential for Kyle to absolutely blow up the slate to fade him.
• Timmy is one of the better drivers in this field and his truck is good enough to finish in the Top 20. He finished 9th at Richmond last year and was legitimately that good. He ran almost 90% of the laps in the Top 15 in that race and passed trucks from larger, better funded teams on track.

You can still afford one of Sam Meyer or Derek Kraus.

• On the plus side for Sam, he starts 40th and is really good at short, flat tracks. On the negative side, he's not with GMS who he raced with last year. He's with a small, family owned start up team that has some connection to GMS, but is not a full GMS team. So the equipment speed and reliability are big question marks. If Sam was in a GMS truck, I'd put him in the Top 10 at the end of this race. In this truck, be realistic and say 15th-20th is a reasonable projection for him. He's not going to lead laps or run fastest laps. With a 20th place finish, he scores 43 DK points. A 15th place finish is 53 DK points. Very safe floor. Just understand the ceiling is quite limited as well.
• Kraus missed the set up terribly at Richmond last year and seemed to be riding on the splitter in the corners which made him not be able to turn the truck. He was awful. I'm sure he'll be better here this year and he's probably got a little more upside than Meyer. Meyer is by far the safer play, but the salary difference is significant.

Or you can take a chance on Chandler Smith or Johnny Sauter.

• Smith finished 12th here last year and then finished 3rd later in the season at Phoenix -- which has some similarities to Richmond. But this is also a guy that runs into a lot of problems and is just so up and down. There's Top 10 potential here and he is a solid play at a very reasonable price.
• I grouped these two together because their salaries are so close and they're basically the same profile -- Top 10 potential with a lot of potential to finish worse than 30th as well. You just can't safely predict where either of these guys will end up from week to week.
• At the end of the day, I'm probably staying away in cash, but using in a lineup or two in a larger tournament.

Salary Savers

• Dawson Cram -- Just a function of decent salary, starting spot and some experience.
• Timothy Peters -- Same but with more experience.
• Danny Bohn -- Same as Cram.
• Ryan Reed -- Old name from the Xfinity Series where he had a lot of success at plate tracks. He's in a Ray Ciccarelli truck here, so it's not going to have real great speed or reliability. He's a respectable driver though, so he should be able to finish in the Top 30 if the truck stays in one piece. They were still looking for tire money mid week, but I'd be surprised if Reed were coming back to park in the middle of the race. SATURDAY UPDATE - LOOKS LIKE HE GOT SPONSORSHIP FROM CAMPING WORLD, SO FIRE HIM UP WITH CONFIDENCE
• Tate Fogleman -- If you need to go to the extreme on savings, this is the last decent option. He finished 15th (Richmond), 18th (Gateway) and 19th (Phoenix) at three of the shorter, flat tracks last year.

Bets - I like some H2H bets for this race

• Enfinger -125 Moffitt -- Moffitt's not in a GMS truck anymore. This is way off.
• Lessard +150 Meyer -- Also not is a GMS truck anymore.
• Ankrum +135 Meyer -- Same