Ever try to race your buddy on the road or see who can get where faster? Then you all know the main goal is to be the fastest and it’s the same in NASCAR. Everyone wants to be on top of the leaderboard whether it is practice, qualifying, or the race the goal is the same be the quickest. One of the most overlooked aspects of racing is a fastest lap. While teams have multiple practices every weekend they really don’t rely a ton on the fastest lap that could be misleading for fantasy players. Let us take a look on what a fast lap is and how to know the different meanings of them so you can be a better fantasy player as NASCAR fantasy expert picks.
One might think it is pretty simple to guess the fastest lap, but craziest thing about it in NASCAR is it could really be anyone in the field. It is very important to find those that will get the fastest laps though. In contests that count fastest laps, they count for .5 points each lap they run. While it might not seem like an awful lot those can add up real quick if you are able to find the driver that is able to get you double digit laps in that category. These could be the little extra points needed that is the difference in winning and losing.
First you need to look at the type of track they’re racing on that week. For example the bigger tracks like Daytona and Talladega usually have less total laps so the point upside for fastest laps really isn’t there, but the shorter tracks when they may have 500 laps have a huge upside for them. Once that is determined you need to understand most of the time (not all the time) the fastest car will be the leader. So if the pole sitter starts the race, all likelihood he will get a few fastest laps early. Clean air does wonders for those racecars, since the leader is the first one and there are no cars in front of him he will get all the clean air making his car faster and since everyone is behind him they get “dirty air” and will then be slower from it.
There is always a case where this isn’t true, but at the start you can usually bet on this to be the case. When this changes is when tires start to fall off and lose speed, this is when we may see the fastest laps come from anywhere in the field. Some cars fall off faster than others so we will see different speeds from every spot. How to find these are when practice comes into play, we can judge not only their single lap times, but the best is probably 10 lap average. Kevin Harvick for example has a history of being a bad qualifier, but is always fast during the race; this is because they set his car up for later in the runs.
Another thing that changes who runs faster times is who has the newer tires. Nearly every pit stop will need a tire change and new rubber means better grip for racing ultimately meaning faster times. So if a guy pits before everyone else with older tires, odds are once he gets out there he will be the fastest car on the track and that cycle changes every time someone comes in to the pits. Those three rules; track type, single lap and 10-lap average in practice, and who starts up front, is a great start to building a successful lineup taking in consideration with fastest laps.
Note: This is a guest blog post by Rusty Doyal from Daily Fantasy Insider.
