Matt Vecchio 
Welcome to the NASCAR DFS Pit Stop preview for this weekend’s two races for Atlanta Motor Speedway. I should be calling this a review because I will be looking back at the Atlanta Xfinity and Cup Series races earlier this season. This will be the first time we get to see the NextGen car return to a track so it is essential to look back at what happened. There is nothing that says this race will go the same as it did in March, but it can’t hurt to look back and see what happened. This was the first time both series’ raced on the new Atlanta Motor Speedway which now races as a “superspeedway” track similar to Daytona and Talladega.
Atlanta did not disappoint when it came to cautions and cars wrecking out of the race. In the Xfinity race, we had 23 of 38 cars involved in some type of incident during seven cautions. All of the seven cautions came in the third stage as well, which was not the same in the Cup race. During the Cup Series race at Atlanta, there were eight cautions for incident but they were spread throughout the race. In total, 27 of 37 cars were involved in some way in the eight wrecks and twelve of those cars failed to finish the race.
Do we stack the back here?
Well, if these races finish as both did in the spring then stacking the back is not a bad option. We don’t need to go all the way to the back necessarily because only one car starting lower than 30th in each race finished in the top 15, Vargas – P32 finished 12th in the Xfinity race, and Lajoie – P33 finished 5th in the Cup. Looking at the DraftKings points for the Xfinity Series race, three drivers in the optimal started between 24th and 26th. At the same time, only one driver starting in the top 10 (Allmendinger P7) made the optimal. The Xfinity optimal left $5.3K on the table by the way.
In the Cup Series, it was very different. Only two drivers who started lower than 13th made the optimal lineup from that race, but even with that being the case we still had $2.9K on the table. As for Fanduel, all five drivers in their optimal were also in the DK optimal and there was $15,000 left over in salary.
In Conclusion…
As I said, there is nothing that says these races will be the same as there were back in March, but these trends all align with a typical Superspeedway race. I will be playing lineups similar to what I would build for Daytona or Talladega. Will it be the right play, we don’t know but I think that will most likely be the safest type of build.
Make sure to check out my NASCAR DFS Tutorial to make sure you are ready and understand how I break down the races and build lineups (https://windailysports.com/nascar-dfs-pit-stop-2021-introduction-to-nascar-dfs/).
There were a lot of changes in the cars and what driver is in what car/truck in 2022. Check out my What’s new in 2022 article (https://windailysports.com/nascar-dfs-whats-new-in-2022/)
