We have our second restrictor plate race of 2016 this weekend with the GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. Some Fantasy NASCAR players love these races, some hate them. As far as the Yahoo! Fantasy Auto Racing game goes, we have the same strategy at pretty much all of the Talladega and Daytona races: start save. We usually pick the cars that we have a lot of starts left with and those that we’re probably not going to use all nine starts with for the season. These races also allow you to root for some drivers that you typically don’t, simply because they’re on your roster.
Yahoo! A Group Picks for Talladega
Denny Hamlin (9 starts remaining) – Over the last couple of seasons, the #11 Toyota has been one of the best in the restrictor plate races. Over at Daytona, Hamlin finished 2nd, 6th, 4th, and 3rd before he most recently got to victory lane in this year’s Daytona 500. He hasn’t been that good here at Talladega, but Denny won this race two years ago and ended up finishing 9th in the May race last season. Momentum-wise, he had a good run at Richmond last week (6th), which was his only top 10 finish in all of April. We still have all nine Denny Hamlin starts left in Yahoo! so we’re going to go ahead and roll with him this weekend despite the #11 team not being the best fantasy pick over the last two months.
Dale Earnhardt, Jr. (8 starts remaining) – Junior is going to be on a whole lot of rosters this weekend, but you simply can’t count him out at these big super speedways. He disappointed fantasy owners in this year’s season-opening Daytona 500 but Junior is still the best racer at these tracks–and he has one of the strongest cars, too. Earnhardt is the defending winner of this Talladega race and he ended up finishing 2nd in the fall event here last season. He has also led at least 26 laps in each of the last five races at this track. If you want to be different and try to gain some points by not picking Junior this weekend, be our guest, just don’t complain if he wins and you fall back even further in your league.
As far as the other A Group drivers, we view pretty much everyone as fair game this week except for Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch. While those two should be strong here on Sunday, they’re too valuable in other races and we’re already down to 7 starts left with each.
Yahoo! B Group Picks for Talladega
Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. (9 starts remaining) – It’s probably starting to sound like a broken record but, once again, we didn’t pull the trigger on Stenhouse last week at Richmond and he went on to have a great race before that loose wheel kind of ruined his day. So maybe it was a good thing we didn’t start him. We fully intend on starting Ricky this weekend, though, so hopefully this #17 team can keep up the speed at a track that has been very kind to them over the years. Believe it or not, Stenhouse owns the best average finish here (12.2) of all active drivers–and yes that includes Dale Earnhardt, Jr.! It should be noted that Stenhouse only has five career starts at Talladega, but with only one finish worse than 13th, that’s still pretty dang impressive. He usually doesn’t qualify well or look great during the race, but Stenhouse knows how to stay out of trouble and be there at the end.
Paul Menard (6 starts remaining) – Yeah, we’re already down to six Paul Menard starts remaining, but he’s just really good here at Talladega. So how we’re going to approach this race weekend is that Paul Menard is going to be our backup plan. If two or three of our other B Group drivers look absolutely terrible, we will use Paul Menard as a last resort. Or if the #27 Chevrolet happens to look super fast and starts up front, we might use Menard anyway. In the last five Talladega races, Paul has posted four top 10 finishes, so if you have 7 or more starts left with him, you should probably put him on your Yahoo! roster this weekend.
Jamie McMurray (8 starts remaining) – Jamie Mac used to be considered one of the best restrictor plate drivers in the series, but that title was short-lived and he hasn’t had too many great showings as of late. However, McMurray finished 11th here in this race at Talladega last season, and let’s not forget that Jamie won the 2013 fall race here as well. One other reason we like the #1 Chevrolet his weekend is because of how consistent this team has been all season long. Yeah, they’ve only posted one top 10 finish, but they also haven’t ended up worse than 23rd and Jamie has been a teens pick all year long. We view McMurray as a relatively safe start save B Group pick here at Talladega, so we’re rolling with him this weekend.
Kasey Kahne (8 starts remaining) – With our fourth B Group selection, we’re going with the Hendrick Motorsports horsepower. We still have 8 Kasey Kahne starts remaining, so why not? Kasey ran 13th in this year’s season-opening Daytona 500 and he was pretty strong here at Talladega last season–at least in terms of qualifying. Kahne started 2nd in both events here in 2015, although he ended up finishing 34th and 19th. Still, Kahne wound up 8th and 12th in the two 2014 Talladega races, and you never really know how is races are going to play out. In terms of average driver rating, Kahne ranks 5th among active drivers here at Talladega over the last four events.
We’d like to use Carl Edwards or Martin Truex, Jr. here at Talladega, but it’s simply not worth the risk of them wrecking. These Talladega races are far too unpredictable and those Edwards and Truex starts in the B Group are far too valuable this season. We would like to use Austin Dillon this weekend but we’re already down to six starts left with him, and we might need all of them by the end of the year.
EDIT: We’re going with Danica Patrick instead of Paul Menard. The rest of our A Group and B Group picks remain the same.
Yahoo! C Group Picks for Talladega
With your C Group drivers this weekend, just pick a couple and hope for the best. We highly advise that you do not use Chase Elliott or Ryan Blaney on the restrictor plate tracks. They definitely have the best cars among the C Group drivers, but Elliott and Blaney starts are way too valuable to use them at these unpredictable races. Anyway, we’re going with Landon Cassill and Regan Smith in the C Group this weekend. Cassill finishing a respectable 23rd in this year’s Daytona 500, and he ended up 11th and 4th in the two races here at Talladega in 2014. We’re going with Regan Smith because he ended up 8th in this year’s Daytona 500 and in his last two starts here at Talladega he has finished 6th and 5th. Yeah, past results don’t really mean a lot here–and those finishes came in 2013 and 2012–but it’s better than nothing when making early week picks.
NOTE: We initially had Cole Whitt listed instead of Regan Smith but that has been edited.
EDIT: After practice on Friday, we have decided to pair Brian Scott with Landon Cassill.
what do thing about mcdowell 95? he has rcr power
McDowell is a nice “out of the box” pick this week as well. He finished 15th in the Daytona 500, and he had a pretty good driver rating in that race as well (71.5). The thing with most of these C Group guys is they’re just kind of trying to finish the race, so it’s going to be all about timing on who gets the best finish.
What about David ragan?
There’s a lot to like with Ragan this week. We all know he’s a pretty good plate racer, plus he has those old MWR cars, so not the worst equipment.