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Driver Group Game Fantasy NASCAR

2018 Daytona International Speedway, Daytona 500

DAYTONA 500

Short and sweet for the first week’s race seeing how qualifying didn’t really end until Thursday night. The rest of the season I will try to have my fantasy preview posted a few hours after the conclusion of that week’s race for the next race.

Not much to talk about in the qualifying races because there were only 40 drivers entered, so they all made the starting field. Kind of took out some of the excitement on Thursday. In the first race, Alex Bowman fell to the back on purpose at the start of the race because he is already sitting on the pole and he had nothing to gain and everything to lose if he wrecked his car. Smart move, but it also leads to some boredom and now no one really knows how he will run in the draft during the race.

We saw Jimmie Johnson crash twice this week, but I still wouldn’t be too worried about them and starting towards the back means nothing in this race. So, nothing to really worry about with Johnson, Larson, Keselowski, or Almirola. They will all be fine once the race gets settled in.

I did notice that the cars really seemed to be bouncing and drifting on the track and that tells me we might see a bunch of cautions once again in this race. That also means that most of the drivers won’t end up finishing the race, so it does pay to either run up front or fall back to a second pack early in the race and just ride around the track, which I think we will see some of the drivers do and that is all planned out.

The Ford’s really looked better than the other makes once again this year, so I am going to load up on those drivers. Other than that I caution you not to use drivers you will use all 9 times in the DGG game this year. This is a race with the potential to knock out over half of the field in one accident and as we saw in the past with David Ragan and Trevor Bayne, anyone entered in this race has a chance to win this race!

DRIVER GROUP GAME FANTASY NASCAR PICKS FOR DAYTONA

Driver Group Game Group A

  • Joey Logano
  • Brad Keselowski

Driver Group Game Group B

  • Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  • Trevor Bayne
  • Paul Menard
  • Ty Dillon

Driver Group Game Group C

  • David Ragan
  • David Gilliland

MY TOP-5 OVERALL AT DAYTONA

  1. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  2. Joey Logano
  3. Brad Keselowski
  4. Kevin Harvick
  5. Ryan Blaney

Dark Horse: David Ragan

Stay Away From: Kasey Kahne

Big 18: Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

15 replies on “2018 Daytona International Speedway, Daytona 500”

Out of this group I like the 14 the best. Now if you want to save some starts for him I think the 21 would be a good choice. Remember, Trevor Bayne won this race in that car.

By Post Author

Thanks Jeff, I am leaning towards 21 to save starts for 14. Look forward to another great season!

Just how I have them selected in my article. Logano, Stenhouse, Bayne, and Ragan.

By Post Author

Jeff do your selections factor in starts you have with the drivers for the course of the season? Or are they best picks regardless of starts?

My picks are based on my team. In my article I might have different drivers in my starting spots and then change them after the practice sessions, but I will only put drivers on my roster that I have starts left for.

By Post Author

Practice speeds don’t really mean a lot at a restrictor plate track in my opinion. Most of the practice sessions the drivers don’t draft because they don’t want to get too close to others and have the potential to wreck their cars. Once the race starts they are all going to be in a pack anyway and it is who you trust. Daniel is only in his second season, so he probably doesn’t have the trust of the veteran drivers yet and they might not want to draft with him. That doesn’t mean he can’t win this race. It just means I like to use drivers I won’t use up during the season because of the potential for great drivers to get caught up in the ‘Big One’ here. I think I will probably use Daniel 9 times this year because he kept getting better every week last season and I won’t take the chance on him this week.

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It looks like there were server issues earlier, but they seem to be corrected now.

By Post Author

Keep your head up. It’s a long season and others will fail as the races stack up.

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