watkins glen final

BEWARE that NASCAR is doing inspection on Sunday morning, so starting positions might still change.  But I don't expect the total chaos we saw last week with about 15 cars failing inspection.  Track position is too important and I suspect the teams got their act together after last week.  Maybe a few cars fail, but nothing like last week.  Based on the current grid, these are my targets listed by order of preference within each tier (I'm focusing on DK here, but FD specific notes are at the bottom):

$10K +

• Kyle Busch -- Finished Top 8 in ten of the last eleven races here and usually leads laps
• Martin Truex -- Won the last two road course races -- started 3rd, led 24 laps and won here last Summer
• Denny Hamlin -- Has become a very strong road course racer -- won here in 2016 and finished 4th last year

$7K - $10K

• Clint Bowyer -- Excellent road course racer -- finished Top 6 in four of the last five races with a quality team (even finished 18th with sub-par H Scott Motorsports in 2016)
• Kurt Busch -- Finished Top 10 in four of the last five races here and is a collective +33 position difference in those races
• Brad Keselowski -- Led 20, 28 and 27 laps in the last three races here despite starting 8th, 12th and 11th
• AJ Allmendinger -- This is easily his best track and the road course where he really excels (instead of Sonoma).  Won here in 2014 and finished Top 10 in six of the last seven here
• Daniel Suarez -- Started 5th, led 14 laps and finished 3rd last year -- plus all JGR Toyotas looked awesome on Saturday
• Jamie McMurray -- Pretty solid road course record of late with finishes in the 8-15 range.

Under $7K

• Eric Jones -- Started 6th, finished 10th last year -- as mentioned above, the JGR Toyotas looked awesome on Saturday -- had a strong 7th place run with +13 position difference at Sonoma earlier this year --  severely mispriced at $6,700
• Chris Buescher -- Since joining JTG and becoming AJ Allmendinger's teammate, he has three straight Top 20 finishes at the road courses.  11th here last year, 12th at Sonoma earlier this year and 19th at Sonoma last year.
• Michael McDowell -- Has finished 12th and 17th the last two races here from a similar starting spot.  A bit of a risk though because (unlike most of my other targets) there's almost no position difference upside and a fair bit of downside if he has a mechanical issue of gets caught in something.

Lineup Construction Notes

• This is a week when you can succeed without having a Dominator.  In the last three races here, the driver scoring the most extra points for laps led and fastest laps had 18, 15.5 and 12.25 extra points.  With the few laps (90) and numerous different leaders based on pit strategy, etc. there really isn't any reason to pay up for guys starting up front at the traditional Dominator spots if there is value in the middle of the field.
• Another reason not to pay up for an expected Dominator is that the bottom "salary saver" guys here are really rough.  I really don't want to have anything to do with guys under Buescher/McDowell.
• With that in mind, I think a good option in cash games is to take Jones and five of the guys in the $7-10K bracket.  I think that gives you plenty of positive position difference points and solid finishing positions in all six lineup spots.  Plus, guys like Bowyer, Kurt Busch, Keselowski and Allmendinger all offer some hope of grabbing a few laps led and fastest lap points as well.  I much prefer that set-up over including one of the $10K plus guys and then having to grab a bottom feeder to fit under the salary cap.

FanDuel

• Strategy is much the same on FD.  Jones is not as badly mispriced, but is still a fine value.  You can easily build rosters using various combinations from the $7-10K list above while mixing in one guy from the top or cheap tier.