February 2015 – Page 2 – Fantasy NASCAR Blog

Welcome to the 2015 NASCAR season!

As Fantasy NASCAR players, we begin another year of deciding which drivers will carry us to victory. This season, we will have a weekly article posted on Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet committed specifically to finding the best bargain drivers on Fantasy Live. The goal of this article is to provide an overview of how to play Fantasy Live and some basic strategies that are used in this format.

Compete against us on the Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet league! Details at end of article.

NASCAR FANTASY LIVE SCORING METHOD

The scoring system on NASCAR Fantasy Live combines 1) Finish Position, 2) Start-to-finish differential, 3) Laps led, 4) Fast laps.

The benefit to this format is that the statistics reward drivers based on how they drive throughout the race. I love the Yahoo Fantasy Racing format, but get frustrated when I pick a team that dominates the race only to blow a tire in the last ten laps and ruin my week. In Fantasy Live, you will at least be rewarded for Fast Laps and Laps Led for the race.

Fantasy Live uses a salary cap format to prevent you from simply starting the best drivers every week. You have to choose five drivers ever week and are limited a $100 salary cap.

The top drivers in the series typically carry a salary cap figure of $28. Every week, you also need to select a pit crew and manufacturer for additional bonus points. Last season, Chevrolet won the most consistent manufacturer. Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth were two of the more consistent pit crews last season. My suggestion would be to pick one of these crews for the first few weeks until we find out which pit crews are having success in 2015.

There are a few different strategies that you can use when selecting a roster for Fantasy Live. Every strategy has strengths and weaknesses.

MY TOP-4 STRATEGY TIPS FOR NASCAR FANTASY LIVE

#1 : FRONT-LOAD YOUR LINEUP

This is my suggested strategy for most weeks.

Because Fantasy Live rewards drivers for Laps Led and Fast Laps, your team can win your league if you can pick a dominant car. This strategy is especially recommended on short tracks like Dover and Martinsville. With 500 laps at these tracks, dominant cars have the opportunity to rack up several hundred points. If you pick the top-3 drivers at a track, you usually have about $20 remaining for the other two drivers in your lineup.

I do not recommend this strategy for Daytona and Talladega because there is rarely a dominant team due to the nature of the restrictor plate tracks.

#2 : CHOOSE THE POOR QUALIFIERS

Another common strategy is to start drivers who qualify near the back of the field. This way you can gain points as your driver charges through the field.

Usually, I do not solely lean on this strategy. However, if I see a driver I ranked near the top qualify at the back of the field, I may consider switching my driver. The drawback to this strategy is that drivers often qualify at the back of the field for a reason. Sometimes, they stay at the back of the field all race and provide no value to your team.

This strategy is recommended at Daytona and Talladega.

#3 : STICK WITH A BARGAIN DRIVER

Sometimes, a driver is undervalued at the beginning of the season (see Kyle Larson 2014). If you can lock up a driver early in the year and keep him on your roster, you can have more overall value than the other players in your league as the season progresses.

Driver values change throughout the year based on their performance. Drivers to keep an eye on early in the season include Sam Hornish Jr. and Trevor Bayne. Generally, I avoid this strategy because I prefer to choose drivers on a race-to-race basis. If you are a casual player and do not obsess over your roster on a week-to-week basis, sticking with a bargain driver may be the best option for your team.

#4 : MY WEEKLY NASCAR FANTASY LIVE ARTICLE

Watch for my weekly NASCAR Fantasy Live article posted on our website that is specific to the Fantasy Live scoring format.

In the article, we look at the average points earned by each driver over the last five races at a particular track. Then, we divide the point value by the salary cap figure to determine how many points to expect from each driver. The final number can show where to find value for your roster.

The Accupredict Method, Fantasy Statistics Wizard, and weekly articles on this site are a valuable resource to help with your lineup decisions. We look forward to seeing you throughout the season, and good luck with your 2015 Fantasy Racing season!

JOIN OUR FANTASY NASCAR LIVE LEAGUE

Play along with me and others on the Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet NASCAR Fantasy Live League! Once you are logged in to the game at nascar.com click the ‘Join A League’ link and search for us.

Here are the details:

LEAGUE NAME: Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet
LEAGUE PASSWORD: nascar

36 Races – One Driver Per Race – Fantasy NASCAR

Around this time every NASCAR pre-season I’ll have a subscriber or two contact me about helping them out with their fantasy NASCAR game. The most difficult and urgent request is always the fantasy NASCAR game where you have to select one driver for each of the 36 races on the NASCAR schedule. In addition, you can only use a driver one time. Oh, and you have to make your complete season selections prior to the Daytona 500!

Unfortunately, none of the NASCAR statistical tools on the site make that challenge very easy. Actually, I still haven’t scripted or figured out a database query that makes the task easy either. It’s a labor intensive project that is an excruciating 90-minutes of 1) database query 2) copy/paste 3) rearrange drivers 4) do it again. But, like most research projects that suck while you’re doing it, in the end you’re pretty happy with the data you’ve compiled.

Since I put the effort in to this project and I think that 100 people could interpret and select a different combination of driver-to-race pairings I’m putting the spreadsheet here for anyone to download.

Click to download the spreadsheet.

NASCAR STATISTICS EXAMINED

Last season I created this spreadsheet using the averaged NASCAR Loop Data Driver Rating over the previous three seasons. This year I went with each drivers average finish position.

The top row of the spreadsheet follows the actual race schedule order of the 2015 NASCAR season. Going on the theory that certain drivers do better (or worse) as the season progresses I compiled the average finishes to be race specific. So, the column labeled Daytona 1 uses just the historical data from the first Daytona races during 2012, 2013 and 2014 (aka the Daytona 500). When you move along the top and get to Daytona 2 those values use the average finishes for the Daytona summer race (aka Coke Zero 400). This applies to all two race date tracks on the schedule.

I’ve included 54 NASCAR drivers in the list. This is basically the drivers the website considers as ‘active’ in 2015…meaning we should see them at some time this year attempting to make a race. The number along each driver row is their 3-year average finish (as noted above to be race specific).

Be aware that some of the lower-tier drivers on the list may not have three races of history for a race. For example, Kyle Larson has an average finish of 8th at Atlanta. In reality, he has only raced one race there so that is not really an average but his only finish.

Enjoy!