Darlington Fantasy NASCAR Front Runner Rankings
Bubba Wallace
Darlington Fantasy Spin – Fantasy racing is about, “What have you done lately”, and thankfully last fall, Bubba Wallace had his best Darlington race and finished 9th. Prior to that, Wallace was 8 for 8 at finishing outside the top 15, and in 7 of those he finished 21st or worse. I’ll note, I view Dover as having a level of correlation and he recently finished 12th there.
Darlington Track History – Last fall at Darlington, Bubba Wallace ran well and had his all-time best Darlington race and finished 9th. Additionally, Wallace finished 10th in Stage #1, 12th in Stage #2, had a 9.9 average running position, ranked 8th for speed late in a run and had the 12th best Total Speed Ranking. Last spring, Wallace was actually a top ten contender, but his afternoon wasn’t incident free. With 33 to go he was running in 10th but then shortly after that during a restart he crashed which led to his 27th (DNF, finished 33 laps down). In the race, Wallace had a 12.8 average running position and his Total Speed Ranking for the afternoon was the 14th best. In 2021, Wallace had a pair of 21st’s.
Ty Gibbs
Darlington Fantasy Spin – Ty Gibbs has had an increased level of performance over the last few months and hopefully that can continue at Darlington. Assuming the good times continue, I’m going to pencil Gibbs in as a low double-digit to mid-teens driver who has a good chance to finish in the top ten. Darlington can be tough on rookies, but I think he’ll be OK.
Darlington Track History – Last fall, Ty Gibbs had one of his better 2022 Cup races and finished 15th when the checkered flag waved. Additionally, Gibbs had an 18.6 average running position and the 21st best Total Speed Ranking. Last year at Darlington in the lower series, Gibbs finished 6th in the fall and then in the spring he finished 2nd in Stage #1 & #2 but then finished 16th when the checkered flag waved so I’ll assume some sort of issue.
Daniel Suarez
Darlington Fantasy Spin – At Darlington, Daniel Suarez has a bad track record but in 2022, he was 2 for 2 at being a top ten contender. One strength of Suarez’s that needs to get noted is that he’s great at high-wear intermediates. Suarez finished 4th at Auto Club this spring and over the combined races since 2022 his 9.2 average finish ranks as the 3rd best. On Sunday, I’m going to view him as a risky top ten contender.
Darlington Track History – At Darlington, Daniel Suarez has run well in recent races and over the last three, Suarez has a 13.7 average finish, and I’ll note that underrates him since he had a misleading result last fall. Last fall, Suarez was a top five contender but finished an asterisk mark 18th. In the race, Suarez started in the back, served a pass thru penalty under green at the start, finished 8th in Stage #2 but then on lap 267 while running in 4th, Suarez hit the wall hard and said he lacked grip. Then during a round of green flag pit stops after that, he was caught speeding and was never able to bounce back. If his race would’ve been incident free, I have no doubt he was primed to finish quite well. In the race his Total Speed Ranking was the 14th best. Last spring, Suarez had his all-time best Darlington performance. In the race, Suarez finished 10th in Stage #2, 10th when the checkered flag waved, had an 11.8 average running position, had the 11th best Total Speed Ranking and ranked 10th for speed late in a run. In fall 2021, Suarez finished 13th.
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