🔥Written by 2020 FBWC and 2021 KoS qualifier @joejets19

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Toyota/Save Mart 350🏁

This Sunday, the NASCAR Cup Series will be traveling to Sonoma Raceway in Sonoma, CA for the Toyota/Save Mart 350. The track is a 2.52 mile, 12 turn road course that features 160 feet of elevation changes. While the Cup series has added a variety of new road courses over the last two seasons, they still come back to Sonoma and Watkins Glen, the two legacy tracks on the schedule. Since there are so many road tracks now, I prefer to split the Rovals (Charlotte and Daytona) from the traditional road courses (Sonoma, Watkins Glen, Cota, and Road America). The Indy Road course is a bit of a tweener, it has elements of a Roval but since Indy is a flat track it still resembles a traditional road track.

Weather will not be an issue on Sunday so everyone should be able to enjoy the California sun.

On to Sonoma!

Scoring Breakdown

At this point, we know how the DK scoring system works, so let's see how many points are available this week:

Laps Led Points =0.25 points per lap led. This week, 110 laps will be run and 27.5 DK points will be awarded (plus any overtime laps).

Place Differential Points = 1 point per position gained or -1 point per position lost.

Fastest Lap Points = 0.45 points per lap not run under caution (roughly 100 laps should run under the green flag for a total of 45 possible DK points).

Finishing Position Points: The 40th place driver receives 4 points, and for each position gained, another point is awarded (39th=5, 38th=6…) and the winner gets 46 points.

Lineup Construction 🏁

Road courses are a different type of animal and should be treated as such. Dominators are not what we should focus on when crafting our lineups this week. There are only 110 laps being run on Sunday so dominator points are very limited. Passing can also be difficult on road courses, so loading up on cars in the rear doesn't prove to be optimal very often. Instead we want to focus on finishing position. What that means is we want to front load our lineups more than usual because a driver that starts 12th and finishes 8th might only pick up 4 spots but will score 40 DK pts, as opposed to a driver that starts 25th and finishes 15, who picks up 10 spots, only scores 38 DK pts. While front loading lineup takes on much more risk than we generally like to do, it allows us to maximize our scoring potential. Each of the last five perfect lineups have had at least one driver that starting in the top 10 and three of those lineups featured two drivers that started in the top 9. Conversely, only four out of the thirty perfect lineup drivers over the last five races have started 30th or worse and each one of those drivers finished in the top 18. This weekend, the money will be made in the 10-29 place range. If we choose 1-2 drivers starting in the top 9 and 0-1 drivers starting 30+, we will need anywhere between 3-5 drivers starting in the 10-29 range that can finish in the top 11. Each of the last five perfect lineups featured at least five drivers that finished in the top 12 and not driver made the perfect lineup while finishing worse than 21st.

Stage 1: 25 laps, Stage 2: 30 laps, Stage 3: 35 laps

Lineup Foundation Targets

Kyle Busch ($10,100 DK, $12,500 FD)

Pricing is relatively flat this week with only four drivers (Larson, Elliott, Kyle Busch, and Truex Jr.) priced higher than $10,000 on DK. While most of the field will focus on who will be a dominator between Larson and Elliott, I would prefer to start my cash team a little further back in the field with Kyle Busch, starting 12th. Busch is sort of the reason I separated the Rovals from the traditional road courses because he atrocious at Daytona and Charlotte but has ten top 11 finishes in his last 11 traditional road course races. Specifically at Sonoma, Kyle has four straight top 5 finishes with positive place differential in two of those races. Busch was very fast in practice, posting the fourth best single lap speed and the third best 5 lap average. While it is pretty likely either Larson or Elliott make the perfect lineup (but not both), I prefer using Busch as the cornerstone to cash lineups due to his higher floor and similar ceiling.

Erik Jones($7,500 DK, $6,500 FD)

Jones had a tire issue in qualifying so he is starting 33rd on Sunday. While I just warned against backloading lineups, Erik is a legitimate top 15 threat, which could put up a massive score for his mid-range salary. Jones is coming off of three straight top 11 finishes at Sonoma and only has one finish worse than 19th in his last 10 road races (Roval and traditional). Jones will be very popular on Sunday so you may want to go underweight in big tournaments/qualifiers just in case he runs into his usual bad luck but he is perfectly fine for cash games.

Tournament Targets

Ross Chastain ($9,800 DK, $12,000 FD)

As I mentioned earlier, all eyes will be on Larson and Elliott starting 1-2 but starting on the front row at a road course is a precarious situation and you need a nearly perfect race to put up a tournament-winning score. I believe these drivers will soak up so much ownership, and this season has proven to be just about anything but perfect, that we should expand our dominator pool and Chastain is the next logical option. Ross won earlier this year at COTA, dominating from the 16th starting position. He also had three top 7 finishes last season at Road America, COTA and Sonoma. In practice he ran the 3rd best single lap speed and second best 5 lap average, behind the aforementioned Larson and Elliott. Chastain starts 7th on Sunday and I think he can continue his amazing season with another solid run on a road course.

Austin Cindric ($8,400 DK, $11,000 FD)

Cindric has been in the press all week about having the fewest point of any race-winning driver. This week he has a chance to turn the narrative around at one of his better track types. Cindric starts 25th on Sunday and is coming off of a solid run at COTA earlier in the year, finishing 8th and leading 11 laps. He even ran well at the Indy Road Course last year after two poor performances at Road America and COTA. This is purely a gut/narrative play because he was shaky during practice but it usually takes these quirky tracks to get some of the younger drivers back into their groove.

Bargain Basement

Todd Gilliland ($5,100 DK, $3,500 FD)

Everything about this Pitstop has been risky so I might as well continue the theme. We need low-priced drivers that can finish in the top 18 and Gilliland checks both of those boxes on Sunday. He is starting 24th on Sunday and showed some speed during practice. Todd also ran very well at COTA earlier this season, finishing 16th. Gilliland brings significant downside to the table but has the upside we are looking for to take home the big prize.

Other Drivers To Consider

Here are 3 more drivers I like at Sonoma that have a chance to make some noise in no particular order:

Kevin Harvick ($8,100 DK, $7,000 FD)

Martin Truex Jr ($10,000 DK, $13,000 FD)

Alex Bowman ($7,900 DK, $7,800 FD)

Top Driver to Avoid

AJ Allmendinger ($8,800 DK, $11,500 FD)

I really love fading Allmendinger at road courses because he always goes over-owned and I'm going to keep rolling with it. Allmendinger starts 16th on Sunday and was not in love with his car in practice. Sonoma specifically has gotten the best of him throughout his career with two consecutive finishes of 35th or worse and a negative place differential in each of the last four races here.

Pitstop Picks

10-22 (-9.7u)

There is a very good chance either Elliott or Larson wins. If Larson is the winner than anything can happen. As long as Elliott doesn't run away with the race I think Chastain should be close to even money. There is massive value in this line and I can't pass it up.

I feel like this group is grossly mispriced. Hamlin has finished in the top 10 at Sonoma in each of the last five races here. The other drivers in this group are not nearly as experienced and they collectively have a lower floor and lower ceiling.

Thanks for reading and good luck this weekend! Be sure to join me in the LineStar NASCAR chat!

Be sure to download the Toyota/Save Mart 350 cheatsheet and find me on Twitter Good Luck!