J.J. Yeley Too Slow to Be a Solid Underdog Play
1 month agoDespite never being a very successful driver in NASCAR, J.J. Yeley has had a surprisingly long career in the NASCAR Cup Series and it has continued this year with the underfunded and wildly off the pace New York Racing Team. How far off the pace? He qualified 40th and last for today's Talladega race and was 2.7 mph slower than the next-slowest driver Zane Smith, equivalent to the gap in speed between polesitter Michael McDowell and 27th-place Ross Chastain. Although sometimes backmarkers are worth considering for top ten finishes at drafting tracks particularly given the tendency for these races to devolve into wreckfests, it's inadvisable to do so here both because he is way too far off the pace and because fewer cars have crashed at Talladega than at Daytona and Atlanta in recent years.
Source: Racing Reference
Source: Racing Reference