NASCAR DFS: Autotrader EchoPark 500 Track Breakdown

The Round of 8 kicks off this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway where the winner gets a free ticket to the Championship race in a few weeks at Phoenix. The race this weekend marks just the second intermediate track to this point in the playoffs with Las Vegas being the other one. With this being an intermediate track, we need to reconfigure our strategies a bit this week since it’s a tad different from what we’ve used the last few weeks.

It’s been a year since we’ve had an actual points-paying race at Texas Motor Speedway as the previous event here this year was the All-Star race with a different package on the cars. The other thing to consider is that this is one of the longer intermediate races of the year at 500 miles or 334 circuits around the steep banking of Texas. In terms of tracks we can compare Texas to, we’re talking Charlotte, Kansas, Las Vegas, and even Atlanta though tire wear isn’t quite as big of a problem here since the repave in 2017.

Tire Notes

The Cup teams will be using the same tire combo they used here in June as well as used at Las Vegas and Michigan and the same right sides they used at Kansas as well. With the teams being familiar with the tires and the same tracks the tires were used on being similar to Texas as well, it’s a good base to use stats from.

Strategy Notes

There are 334 laps in this and we’ve seen this be a track where one driver is capable of dominating much of those laps. It’s also typically been a track where track position is key as passing can be hard after a certain point and drivers can get spread out after a bunch of green flag laps. There also aren’t typically a ton of cautions in this package at this track but that doesn’t mean that with the playoffs on the line and things getting feistier that some guys won’t make contact with others. Like with most intermediate tracks were dialing in on a dominator or two and then trying to get some guys that can move up from say 25th on up.

Facts To Know

• There are four drivers with a Driver Rating over 100 in the last five races here.
• There are seven drivers who have at least four top-10s in the last five races here.
• Only 34-percent of the top-10 finishers over the last five races have started outside the top-12 starting spots.
• In three of the last five races here, one driver has led more than 100 laps and on average there are 2.2 drivers to lead more than 50 laps in a race with three drivers doing that twice.
• Just over four drivers a race average double-digit position differential in the last five races.
• More than 10 drivers on average post six or more spots of position differential in that same span.
• Seven of the top-11 starting spots on DK rank in the top-10 in scoring on average and six of the top-11 starting spots on FD rank in the top-10 in scoring on average.

The table below shows the number of drivers to reach each stat-type over the last five Texas races with Race 1 being the most recent.

For the tables below:

* The DFS Scoring Table: Race 1 is the most recent race in the sample size with Race 5 being the earliest. We are using the Last 5 Texas races for the data.