Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol is one where you want all the information you can get.
There are a lot of unknowns entering the race. It's the first time we've seen Cup Series cars at Bristol with smaller spoilers since 2018, and it's just the second time we've seen the small spoilers on the cars this year. The other race was in Phoenix, a track with flat banking. Bristol's banking is among the highest on the circuit. We don't know what this package will look like on this track type.
As a result, we also don't have a great sample of which drivers will have the fastest cars for this configuration. We can look at past Bristol races, but then we're missing out on the gains teams like Hendrick Motorsports have made to open 2020.
That's why we want to just blend everything together and hope it can lead us in the right direction.
All the pertinent data for this track is in the table below, from betting odds to current form and track history. The betting odds are based on FanDuel Sportsbook's outrights as of Friday afternoon, and each driver's FanDuel DFS salary is also listed.
The current form section includes six races, five of which are from 2020. The four races since the end of the COVID-19 layoff are there to show us who has flexed muscle recently, potentially an indication of who made the biggest gains while the cars were parked. The other 2020 race was the one in Phoenix to give us a glimpse at who was good in the re-debut of this rules package.
Finally, in order to get another track that is both concrete and high-banked, I tacked on the 2019 playoff race at Dover, as well. This race occurred while some drivers were with other teams and before some teams made their 2020 surges, but with the overlaps that Dover and Bristol share, it seemed worthwhile to include it.
The track history data is from 2019 and 2018. This gives us an idea of who has run well at Bristol both in a similar rules package to what they'll have Sunday (the 2018 races) and who mopped up here most recently.
As always, the numbers for each race are the driver's average running position rather than their finish. The reasoning there can be summed up by Ryan Blaney's ($10,300) race here in the spring of 2018.
In that one, Blaney dominated early. He led 100 of the first 117 laps and looked like he was going to push for a win. Then this happened.
Through no fault of his own, Blaney went from dreaming of the checkers to sitting on a wrecker.
If you judge Blaney based on his 35th-place finish, you'll think he's not a stud at this track. But his second-place average running position shows that ain't the case and that he's someone we'll want to consider for Sunday, both for betting and DFS.
The Cup Series set the order through a combination of owner points and a random draw on Friday, so the drivers are listed in the order of how they'll line up on Sunday.
| Current Form | Track History | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Driver | FD Salary | Win Odds | Start | Char 2 | Char 1 | Darl 2 | Darl 1 | Phoenix | Dover | 2019 Fall | 2019 Spring | 2018 Fall | 2018 Spring |
| Brad Keselowski | $12,300 | 1300 | 1 | 18 | 11 | 12 | 4 | 6 | 11 | 6 | 6 | 14 | 8 |
| Aric Almirola | $8,000 | 4200 | 2 | 22 | 17 | 7 | 13 | 9 | 16 | 24 | 37 | 14 | 15 |
| Joey Logano | $11,700 | 800 | 3 | 4 | 8 | 9 | 12 | 6 | 36 | 20 | 3 | 6 | 8 |
| Ryan Blaney | $10,300 | 1600 | 4 | 4 | 11 | 19 | 17 | 31 | 16 | 8 | 3 | 6 | 2 |
| Martin Truex, Jr. | $12,500 | 700 | 5 | 18 | 3 | 7 | 14 | 11 | 3 | 7 | 14 | 15 | 31 |
| Chase Elliott | $13,000 | 850 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 37 | 4 | 10 | 3 | 32 |
| Kyle Busch | $14,000 | 350 | 7 | 28 | 9 | 14 | 18 | 6 | 10 | 13 | 7 | 19 | 4 |
| Kevin Harvick | $12,200 | 800 | 8 | 6 | 14 | 9 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 22 | 24 | 12 | 12 |
| Matt DiBenedetto | $8,300 | 5000 | 9 | 12 | 17 | 14 | 13 | 11 | 12 | 5 | 12 | 25 | 21 |
| Denny Hamlin | $12,000 | 850 | 10 | 13 | 36 | 9 | 6 | 24 | 2 | 9 | 11 | 15 | 13 |
| Alex Bowman | $11,400 | 2200 | 11 | 13 | 4 | 8 | 3 | 13 | 6 | 15 | 23 | 14 | 9 |
| Kurt Busch | $10,600 | 1300 | 12 | 6 | 12 | 19 | 9 | 14 | 10 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 20 |
| William Byron | $9,300 | 4200 | 13 | 16 | 7 | 14 | 24 | 13 | 10 | 17 | 17 | 22 | 15 |
| Matt Kenseth | $8,000 | 3200 | 14 | 30 | 22 | 17 | 14 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Erik Jones | $9,600 | 2800 | 15 | 19 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 15 | 9 | 10 | 20 | 7 | 18 |
| Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. | $6,200 | 4200 | 16 | 11 | 23 | 28 | 40 | 22 | 17 | 17 | 35 | 21 | 11 |
| Ryan Newman | $7,700 | 7500 | 17 | 19 | 19 | 14 | 16 | -- | 23 | 13 | 9 | 16 | 14 |
| John Hunter Nemechek | $6,400 | 20000 | 18 | 16 | 21 | 38 | 18 | 20 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Chris Buescher | $6,800 | 14000 | 19 | 18 | 17 | 26 | 26 | 22 | 27 | 22 | 11 | 14 | 26 |
| Austin Dillon | $7,000 | 7000 | 20 | 8 | 9 | 18 | 17 | 31 | 20 | 35 | 13 | 13 | 12 |
| Tyler Reddick | $7,300 | 7000 | 21 | 13 | 10 | 19 | 13 | 14 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Cole Custer | $6,600 | 11000 | 22 | 20 | 22 | 25 | 20 | 14 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Clint Bowyer | $9,000 | 2800 | 23 | 21 | 34 | 4 | 9 | 11 | 13 | 10 | 6 | 5 | 13 |
| Jimmie Johnson | $10,000 | 2500 | 24 | 17 | 7 | 17 | 27 | 13 | 7 | 24 | 10 | 10 | 7 |
| Michael McDowell | $4,500 | 20000 | 25 | 18 | 24 | 22 | 24 | 25 | 25 | 31 | 25 | 36 | 29 |
| Joey Gase | $2,000 | 20000 | 26 | 39 | 38 | 31 | 33 | 32 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Quin Houff | $2,500 | 20000 | 27 | 32 | 37 | 31 | 37 | 34 | -- | 35 | 33 | -- | -- |
| Ty Dillon | $5,500 | 20000 | 28 | 28 | 27 | 17 | 24 | 21 | 21 | 24 | 13 | 24 | 29 |
| Gray Gaulding | $2,000 | 20000 | 29 | 29 | 31 | 33 | -- | -- | -- | -- | 34 | 38 | 31 |
| Garrett Smithley | $2,000 | 20000 | 30 | 40 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 35 | 34 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Corey LaJoie | $3,000 | 20000 | 31 | 25 | 25 | 26 | 26 | 24 | 30 | 25 | 27 | 33 | 28 |
| Ryan Preece | $5,000 | 20000 | 32 | 21 | 23 | 29 | 19 | 23 | 19 | 22 | 28 | -- | -- |
| Brennan Poole | $2,500 | 20000 | 33 | 35 | 31 | 26 | 30 | 32 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Christopher Bell | $6,000 | 7000 | 34 | 14 | 15 | 19 | 20 | 20 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Bubba Wallace | $5,000 | 20000 | 35 | 18 | 33 | 17 | 21 | 27 | 22 | 17 | 21 | 37 | 13 |
| Daniel Suarez | $4,000 | 20000 | 36 | 27 | 28 | 27 | 28 | 27 | 17 | 12 | 12 | 19 | 11 |
| Timmy Hill | $2,000 | 20000 | 37 | 34 | 36 | 35 | 34 | 38 | -- | -- | 34 | 31 | -- |
| B.J. McLeod | $2,000 | 20000 | 38 | 34 | 32 | 37 | 39 | -- | 32 | 34 | -- | -- | -- |
| J.J. Yeley | $3,000 | 20000 | 39 | 32 | 36 | 29 | 29 | 28 | 32 | 31 | -- | 28 | -- |
With how important laps led are for Sunday's race, it'll be especially key to identify drivers starting up front with the ability to jump out and dominate the race. This information should at least give you some of the tools to make those ever-critical determinations.