1 month agoLook for Ross Chastain to compete for a top-10 finish in this weekend's Bank of America Roval 400. Looking at the three traditional road course races this season (COTA, Sonoma, and Watkins Glen), Chastain has the best average running position in the series, and his finishes in those races have been seventh, fifth, and fourth (respectively). In practice at the Roval this weekend, the No. 1 Chevrolet was 13th-fastest in the second session on Saturday, and Chastain was able to qualify in 16th for Sunday's race. This combination of a pretty fast car plus some Place Differential potential makes Ross an interesting DFS option this weekend, as he is relatively high-priced on DraftKings ($8,800) but could end up hitting value quite easily if he just pulls off a "normal" performance on Sunday. Chastain finished a career-best 10th at the Charlotte Roval race last season.
--Jordan McAbeeSource: Win The Race
1 month agoDaniel Suarez enters Sunday's Charlotte roval race 10th in the standings, 20 points behind the playoff cut line. Trackhouse Racing certainly has good road-course speed, as Ross Chastain easily could have won at Watkins Glen had he not been bitten by caution timing. Although Suarez tends to consistently have speed on road courses as well, he often struggles to get the finishes commensurate with that speed. The Charlotte roval is a good example, where he has only had one top-20 in his six races, even though he has finished every single race and qualified third in the last two. This time, he only qualified 13th, so it's hard to imagine him making up 20 points, especially since Chase Elliott and Tyler Reddick are the drivers he is chasing and they are much better on road courses than he is.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
1 month agoIn what might be Ryan Preece's final road-course race as a Cup Series driver, he qualified 34th for Sunday's race at the Charlotte roval. Although his modified experience occasionally helps him in treacherous conditions, like in the 2021 Austin race where he briefly fought for the lead in heavy rain, he is just as mediocre on road courses as he is everywhere else when conditions are dry and it is not expected to rain. Although he did finish ninth in the last road-course race at Watkins Glen, that was largely because a lot of the playoff drivers focused on getting stage points, even though it ended up giving them worse finishing positions than how they were running. Preece is probably starting too far behind to significantly benefit from that this time, so don't expect him to seriously contend.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
1 month agoLegacy Motor Club has struggled so much this season that they shook everything up on Tuesday by firing Erik Jones's crew chief Dave Elenz, replacing him with John Hunter Nemechek's crew chief Ben Beshore, and replacing Beshore with Legacy technical director Brian Campe on Nemechek's car. Campe is a major question mark at this point, but he did win a road course pole at Austin and lead 145 laps with William Byron in his four previous Cup Series starts while Byron's regular crew chief Rudy Fugle was suspended. However, this reshuffling doesn't seem to have done much for them this weekend as Nemechek only qualified 35th while Jones was 37th. When combining both the team's instability and their lack of speed, it's extremely unlikely either Legacy car will run well.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
1 month agoJoey Logano qualified fourth for Sunday's Bank of America Roval 400. Logano has consistently been a solid but not electrifying performer at the Charlotte roval, as he has both qualified in the top 10 and finished in the top 10 in all but one race he has competed there. But on the other hand, he's rarely been much of a threat to win, except for the 2022 race, where he won the pole and led the entire first stage before being bitten by strategy. His strong qualifying position does offer him significant potential to score stage points, but the problem is that the drivers he is chasing (Tyler Reddick and Chase Elliott) will likely also be doing that. They also qualified up front and are better road racers. Even though he's only 13 points behind Elliott, it feels like he won't advance unless someone ahead of him has trouble.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
1 month agoAfter a litany of embarrassing crashes this summer, Corey LaJoie has quietly recaptured his 2021-2023 form. Although it was too little, too late to save his Spire Motorsports ride, the move may have been a blessing in disguise since Chris Lawson is a better crew chief than Ryan Sparks and now he gets to be team leader again at Rick Ware Racing, which means he will no longer need to overdrive in a failed attempt to compete with Carson Hocevar. He seems to have settled down with five top 20s in his last six starts and he's also earned top twenties in his last two roval races. Since Sonoma and Watkins Glen were arguably LaJoie's fastest races this year and Lawson delivered Haley a second at the Charlotte street course last year, another top 20 for LaJoie is a reasonable expectation, even though he is only starting 28th.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
1 month agoBrad Keselowski has not been a particularly noted road racer in recent years as he has only posted a single finish better than 10th on a road course in the 2020s and he had vastly more top-10 finishes on this track type in his Penske years, even though there were fewer road courses on the schedule. He has had more awkward crashes than strong finishes on road courses, which is the main reason his teammate Chris Buescher has arguably outperformed him. Nonetheless, he seemed to have speed at Watkins Glen, even though he crashed twice while Buescher won, and he has good runs at the Charlotte roval in the past, albeit not with the Next Gen car. He did significantly outqualify Buescher for this race, qualifying eighth to Buescher's 29th, but one should still expect Keselowski not to contend until proven otherwise.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
1 month agoAlthough Erik Jones finally earned his first top five in over a year at Talladega, he still ran very poorly, especially for a drafting expert. He only finished fifth at Talladega because he lost the draft, which enabled him to miss the Big One. His performance has not improved, which explains why crew chief Dave Elenz was fired and replaced by John Hunter Nemechek's heretofore crew chief Ben Beshore. Although Beshore scored top fives with Kyle Busch in his last two Cup Series races here and a top ten with Nemechek in the Xfinity Series last year, it looks like it will take more than this to turn Jones's season around as he only qualified 37th. Although he earned his best road course finish here of third in 2020, he hasn't scored a top ten on a road course since 2022. Don't expect that to change just yet.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
1 month agoAlthough Daniel Hemric has never done much on the Charlotte roval at the NASCAR Cup Series level, he was a reliably consistent driver there in the Xfinity Series with four top-10 finishes, including two third-place finishes along with starting fourth or better in every one of his starts. But the Cup Series is another beast, and he only qualified 27th for Sunday's race and finished no better than 23rd in his two previous appearances here. Sometimes drivers can piggyback off their road-racing expert teammates' setup notes to gain speed, so Shane van Gisbergen winning the pole potentially could help Hemric's race setups. However, judging by his qualifying, Hemric seems more likely poised for his usual mediocre run.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
1 month agoNoah Gragson qualified 32nd for the Charlotte roval in a session where none of the Stewart-Haas Racing drivers did very well. Although Gragson did not compete here last year because he was fired by Legacy Motor Club before this portion of the season, he did compete once here in 2022 where he started 29th and finished 23rd while subbing for the injured Alex Bowman. Gragson looked like he was building towards something during the spring, but has faded into mediocrity in the months since. Although he did win a pole at the Charlotte roval in the Xfinity Series and had an average finish of fourth there, he has never earned a top ten on a road course as a Cup Series driver and it seems unlikely that'll change today.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
1 month agoAfter Austin Cindric's crash at Talladega, he fell 29 points behind Chase Elliott for the final transfer spot to make the Round of 8. Cindric winning his way into the Round of 8 can't entirely be ruled out since he is starting fifth, but he also isn't as good on road courses as people seem to think he is as drafting tracks are truly his best track type, so he is not as likely to win at the Charlotte roval as he was at Talladega. Even though he showed flashes of brilliance on road courses in 2021 and 2022, he has seemingly regressed as the Penske cars have had only intermittent speed and he hasn't really factored on any of them this year although he did finish 10th at Watkins Glen. Expect his playoff run to end today.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
1 month agoAlthough it's hard to imagine Harrison Burton contending in Sunday's Charlotte roval race, especially since he is a lame-duck driver and starting 26th, it is worth noting that he did finish third on the short-lived Indianapolis roval as a rookie in 2022, which was his best finish before his win at Daytona this year. He also won a Michelin Pilot Challenge race at Daytona in a shared drive with Zane Smith, so he is not entirely averse to road racing. Having said that, he has never scored a top-10 finish at the Charlotte roval in any division, and now that his next year with AM Racing in the Xfinity Series has been announced, it's hard to see what motivation he has to elevate his performance since he has been eliminated from the playoffs and the team is pretty much guaranteed to finish 16th in points.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
1 month agoChase Briscoe is almost certainly not going to advance to the Round of 8 in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs since he enters Sunday's race at the Charlotte roval 12th in the standings, 32 points behind Chase Elliott for the final transfer spot. Briscoe does have solid runs on road courses periodically and just finished sixth and scored the most points in the last road course race at Watkins Glen, which helped him to improbably advance to the Round of 12 this year. But don't look for lightning to strike twice. In order to gain 32 points on Elliott, he would almost certainly have to win or accumulate a lot of stage points, which is very unlikely since he is starting 25th, last among the drivers still eligible for the playoffs. His attempt at a Cinderella run almost certainly ends here.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
1 month agoRyan Blaney has tended to struggle on road courses with the Next Gen chassis and has been slightly faster on road courses this year than in 2023, particularly at Sonoma, where he started third and finished seventh. Although he won the inaugural Charlotte roval race after Jimmie Johnson wrecked Martin Truex Jr. and himself while battling for the lead on the last lap, that result came with the Gen 6 car, where he tended to perform better on road courses. However, he only qualified 14th for Sunday's race, which is worse than he usually does. When you further consider that he is likely to make a play for stage points to remain above the cut line, it's unlikely he'll significant contend for a top-five points finish. But since he is 25 points ahead of his teammate Joey Logano for the transfer spot, he is still highly likely to advance.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
1
month
agoAfter
qualifying
for
Sunday's
Bank
of
America
ROVAL
400
at
the
Charlotte
Motor
Speedway
Roval
Course,
Chase
Elliott
will
begin
the
race
from
the
seventh
position,
his
highest
at
the
site
since
2020.
In
six
starts
at
the
Roval,
Elliott
is
the
Cup
Series
only
two-time
winner
at
read more...
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