Who’s ready for a new NASCAR Cup Series track? That’s just what we get this weekend. World Wide Technology Raceway, otherwise known as Gateway, is the host venue for the Enjoy Illinois 300. Fans of the Truck Series will know it from the yearly stop that series makes and even the Xfinity Series raced there for a time up until 2010. For Cup Series fans though, this is a new track on the schedule. So with it being a new track, what does that mean for DFS? Well, below we’ll have the normal DFS Strategy write-up as well as Goodyear Tire info and the Track Layout and facts. Don’t worry either, we’ll still have some of the tables at the bottom of the piece as well.

World Wide Technology Race Layout

Gateway as it’s also known is located just outside St. Louis, on the Illinois side. It’s been a popular stop for the Truck Series as well as Xfinity and even for Indy Car. The 1.25-mile track is shaped a bit like Darlington in that it’s a bit egg-like. Turns 1 & 2 are a tighter radius than Turns 3 & 4 making the setup tricky. That’s where the comps to Darlington end though. Darlington is a worn-out surface and far steeper than Gateway is. World Wide Technology Raceway was repaved in 2017 and the turns are only tilted at 11 and nine degrees respectively. That means that we are going to be comping the track to more of a Phoenix or Richmond or New Hampshire layout. So when we’re looking at strategy, lets keep in mind the build for those tracks that we usually employ.

Enjoy Illinois 300 DFS Strategy

This race is going to be a relatively short one. It’s just 240 laps. Couple that with the 1.25-mile length of the track, it’s going to fly by. So if it’s a new track and a short race, what do we do for strategy? We’re approaching this like we did for Phoenix. Passing is undetermined here but clicking off laps led should be fairly quick to rack up. Given the tracks we’ve seen comped to WWT Raceway, we should be building for that style of racing. Practice will tell us quite a bit about how the drivers are adjusting to the new car on the new track but we should expect some multi-groove racing throughout the afternoon. The other thing to keep in mind, that we’ve not had to pay attention to much over the last few races is that cars will get lapped here; fairly quickly too. Just think about what happens at Richmond and Phoenix with back-markers and the back half of the field. We’ll be basing plays off of which drivers have looked good at similar tracks this year and last, given that the aero package this year isn’t far off the short track package las year, and who’s looked good at practice.

Goodyear Tire Notes for Gateway

We’re not the only ones coming Gateway to Phoenix and Richmond — Goodyear is too. The tire combination this week has been used twice already this year at Phoenix and Richmond. So not only will the teams be familiar with how that tire code combo wears and runs in the race, but so with the DFS players as well. We should still expect some tire issues as there were tire situations at both Phoenix and Richmond.

Facts To Know This Week

  • There are five drivers in the field this week with average Driver Ratings over 100 in the past six similar races.
  • This year, more than 50-percent of Ryan Blaney’s fastest laps and laps led have come at shorter, flatter tracks.
  • Since Richmond in April (outside of Darlington), Kyle Busch has an average finish of 4.6 in those races.
  • The pole-sitter for both Phoenix and Richmond this year led 120-plus laps
  • There is a full 50-minute practice session this weekend since it’s a new track.
  • A lot of the field has previously raced at Gateway and about a quarter of the field has won here previously, though that was prior to the repave and in lower series.
  • Zane Smith will replace Chris Buescher this weekend and has been added to the driver pools.

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 Richmond, Phoenix, and Nashville races for the data.

The Similar Races table: The data is comprised of stats from the last 5 races at Phoenix, Richmond, and Nashville last year.