 The NASCAR Cup Series is in the Midwest this week. They are in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. My heart yearns for some quick trip hash browns and coffee as they are actually presenting the race for this week. It's the Jockey Made in America 250% of my quick trip. And of course, we'll get the presented by quick trip in there. They are at Road America for the first time since 1956 on the Cup Series side of things. And that does mean there is an altered schedule for this weekend with practice and qualifying. We'll go through what that means from a DFS perspective. And what you need to know for this week and also, of course, go tier by tier and break down our favorite drivers for Road America. Welcome on into the Heat Check Fantasy podcast powered by Number Fire. That's right here on the FanDual Podcast Network and NumberFire.com. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for Number Fire here to break down the Jockey Made in America 250, of course, presented by quick trip from a NASCAR DFS perspective. Locke for this weekend is at 2.30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday. And that is a key number, which we'll talk about later on. First, though, make sure you are subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcasts, we're in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Google Podcasts. Wherever you get your podcasts, you can find us. We have an MLB DFS podcast every day, PGA back next week, UFC back next week, too, with Austin Swain, to get you set for, I believe, a McGregor fight. So a big one coming up there. Make sure you are subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed to get all of that. Hey soccer fans, this season FanDual and Captain Morgan are teaming up to give you a one-of-a-con soccer contest. Introducing Captain Morgan's soccer pick-up, a weekly fantasy contest that is entirely free to play. The contest is simple. All you do is make quick predictions for Saturday games this soccer season. You will earn points for each correct pick and compete for a chance to win up to $3,000 in prizes every single week. Head over to FanDual and enter the Captain Morgan soccer pick-up today. Must be 21 plus to participate. For more details, visit fanDual.com or download the FanDual Fantasy app. Eligibility restrictions apply and don't forget to make your game day more delicious and sub in the Captain. Let's take a look at the track breakdown for this week at Road America. It's another week where the schedule does matter a lot from a DFS perspective. Qualifying is on Sunday, which is the same as we had for Kota earlier this year and for National as well. The problem is the window is tighter this time around. Qualifying should wrap up by around noon or so on Sunday and then lock is at 2.30 pm Eastern. That means we have a two and a half hour window to fill out lineups. That's an hour shorter than it was for both Nashville and Kota and it's also on July 4th. So once again, you have to decide what your goal is in playing NASCAR DFS as we get. If you're playing for fun, do whatever you want. There's a lot of fun in playing DFS even when you're not, you know, you just want to get a sweat in stuff like that. I get that for sure. But if your goal is to fill out plus EV lineups and try to profit, you do need to be around in that time to react to what happens in Qualify. It's possible nothing big happens, but you want to be there for sure if it does. So again, if you want to fill out plus EV lineups for this weekend, make sure you are around between noon Eastern and 2.30 pm Eastern to fill out lineups post Qualifying. And I will say because of that window and because of the presence of July 4th, you're going to be going up against a lot more sub optimal lineups than usual. So that's an added incentive to be around in that time. If you can again, family matters, you know, have some fun. But if you're trying to fill out the best line as possible, you want to be around in that gap between noon and 2.30 on Sunday. The reason starting spot matters so much is that it's a very short race on Sunday. It's only 62 laps, which leaves 6.2 fan dual points available for lap sled in all these shorter races where there aren't a lot of points available for lap sled. We want to find place differential options who can make up ground and finish well. They should be available to us even with Qualifying happening at Kota. There was qualifying there three of the five drivers who were in the perfect lineup started 20 at the lower part of that because there was a lot of rain and there were crashes, et cetera, et cetera. But it was true previously at road courses with qualifying as well. We saw at least three place differential options in two of the three road course races with qualifying back in 2019 as well. So our optimal default approach is to accept place differential where it is presented to us. And that wording is key. We'll talk about why in just one second. That's unlikely to wind up being all five slots. And there are two reasons for that. The first one is we do want to find the assumed winner. Assumption lineups are fully in play for this week. The winner is probably going to start up front. So that gives us one non-place differential driver. You want to pick your assumed winner, whether it be Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson, anyone else, find them first, lock them in, and then go from there. We can get two guys up front as well because each of the past four road course races with qualifying has had multiple drivers who started inside the top 10 in the perfect lineup. The 2019 race in Charlotte had three. I would not assume that will happen again because it is kind of abnormal, but that's why I phrase it as being accept place differential where you can find it because you need finishing points here. You need those 40 points per second in addition to the 43 points for win. And most of those guys who finish well, who get those good finishing points, will likely come from the front. So one way to play things here is to go from back to front. And what you do here is you look at starting order on Sunday, start with those drivers starting further back and work your way toward the front. Once you see a driver starting in the back who has the upside to finish inside the top 10, focus on that driver, make them a core play. They're probably going to be a really good option for DFS. If the driver does not have that upside, you should ignore them. You don't want to use drivers starting further back just because they're starting there. You need guys who can finish well. And if that means you wind up targeting drivers starting close to the front, so be it. That can definitely work out here, but we just want to make sure we are giving the values the correct level of interest before we get to that point. So check out drivers starting further back, try to see if they have the upside to finish inside the top 10 or the top five. If they do so, build around them. If not, continue to move towards the front. The way to determine that, it actually should be pretty easy because this is the fourth road course race we've had this year, the fourth of seven. That's the most they've had in my lifetime in a single year already. Those first three races will give us a good indication of who will be fast on Sunday. And we also have practice times on Saturday. It's a very long track, so it may not get five lap averages from everyone, but I would expect a decent number of guys to give us five lap averages, and those will be a good signal to us of who will be fast during the race. So I would blend everything together, look at road course history, look at practice, and then also I will look at current form in the 750 horsepower package as well. If you looked at just road course history, you probably would not have been super high on Kyle Larson at Sonoma, but I mean he's been good on road courses, but you wouldn't have known how good he could have been in that race. So we don't want to overlook good plays who are running well, just because they may not have the best finishes on road courses. Current form does still matter on road courses, even though we should emphasize the three road course races above all else so far this year. So look at that, combine with practice, and then decide who will be in contention for wins for your assumed winner, and who can get a top 10 starting further back on Sunday as well. So to recap strategy for this weekend, it does revolve around the schedule. You need to be around between noon Eastern and 2.30 pm if you want to fill out the most optimal lineups on Sunday. And again, we will have some bad lineups, more bad lineups than usual in the pool for this week, and that's a good thing. We can take advantage of that if you're around in that time on Sunday. You should accept place differential where you can find it and pick an assumed winner. Those are the two key things for this week. If those two things combined leads to getting two drivers inside the top 10, that's totally fine. It's paid off at recent road course races with qualifying, totally on board, but our default and our core should revolve around drivers who can get us some place differential on Sunday. We should value practice times on Saturday, especially if we get five lap averages. Those are great, but also look at road courses this year and a sprinkle of what drivers have done in the 750 horsepower package. If they found additional speed recently, that's good too. So practice, road course history, 750 package, all those things are key for this week. One other thing to note for Road America specifically is it does have some longer straightaways, so I might be valuing overall equipment more than usual, which means we might bump down someone like Michael McDowell or Chris Buscher, but I'll still be in on them for sure, given the low salaries. But it's possible, given the way the track breaks down, that equipment may matter a bit more than usual for this week. So that is the track breakdown for this week. Let's go into our tier by tier breakdown, looking at drivers in each salary tier who I at least want to monitor for this weekend. This is before practice and before qualifying. Things will change there. So the tiers that I'm saying right now are just based on information, pre-practice, pre-qualifying. We do want to be reactive to what happens in those two things. But before practice and qualifying, here are my thoughts on each tier. The elite tier on Fandall is Chase Elliott at $14,500 through Kyle Busch at $12,500. And these guys are here for a reason, all four are great road racers, and that makes it hard to rank them. I'm having a hard time though not ranking Martin Truex Jr. first, given the salary savings he gets you at $13,000. And Truex hasn't been great this year. He finished 12th in Daytona, huge wreck at Coda, but he ran well in Daytona, and he finished third in Sonoma. The long-term history for Truex and road courses is very good. So I think that if we're like tearing off this individual tier, I think that Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson, and Martin Truex Jr. all in the same tier, but Truex gets you a nice salary discount at $13,000, whereas they are at $14,500 and $14,000 respectively. So I will take the discount and rank Truex number one in this tier for right now. I would go Larson over Elliott in second place. Elliott has been a smidge better. If you look at aggregate average running position on road courses this year, long-term sample of dominance is very good for him. So Elliott two, Larson three, Kyle Busch is ranked fourth, but that's not to say I don't like him. He had a top eight average running position in both Coda and Sonoma. He just hasn't shown as much race-winning upside as those other guys on road courses recently. So to me, this tier is ranked before practice qualifying, Truex one, Elliott two, Larson three, and Kyle Busch four. The second tier on Fandola is Denny Hamlin at $12,000 through Ryan Blaney at 10-2, and this is a strong tier at the top. It does fall off after that. The two key guys here are Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano. They've been the two guys up there with Elliott Larson and Truex on road courses. If we look since the start of last year, so five road course races, Logano actually has the best average finish on road courses. Those finishes in order are ninth, second, second, third, and fourth. And that does not count a non-points paying race in the Bush class where he finished on the podium also at the Daytona road course. So I think Logano is going to win on a road course this year at some point. It could be this weekend. I think he is tremendous at 11-8 and someone who is going to, I will say it right now, he's going to win on a road course this year. Let's do it, Joey Logano. Get that job done. Hamlin is $12,000. The performance this year hasn't been as consistent as Logano's, but Hamlin was top three in Daytona, the road course, both last year and this year. Obviously, the equipment is very good. That's tremendous for this weekend. So I'm going to rank him below Logano. But to me, Logano and Hamlin within this tier are in a tier of their own. I think there's a decent little fall-off after them. So this tier is Logano 1, Hamlin 2, fall-off down to William Byron 3, Ryan Blaney 4, Brad Keselowski 5, and Kevin Harvick 6. Blaney and Byron have good road course history, but haven't had the best speed this year. So put them below a full tier below, but keeping an eye on them in practice to see if they can pick things up a bit for us on Saturday. The mid-range is awesome. It is Alex Bowman at $10,000 through Kurt Busch at $8,500. And there are guys in this range who, I might rank above the tier above them considering the salary difference. And I want to be in this tier a lot. Anybody in this range could be a core play. So let's rank them for now before practicing qualifying. Number one for me, which might be a bit different than others, is Christopher Bell. He's $9,000. And Bell, after that win at Daytona, has not had a ton of success on road course this year. But I was listening to the Positive Regression podcast with Alan Kovana and David Smith. And they had Michael Self on the podcast. He is a former Xtinity series driver. And now he's a coach. He coaches drivers in Trans Am 2. And one of the guys he coached was Christopher Bell on road courses. He said that Bell's style specifically should be well suited for this track, aggressive, kind of all out. Bell is also running the Trans Am 2 race there this weekend. That's on Saturday. I think he had practiced for that yesterday. So a lot of experience on this track for Christopher Bell. He won here in the Xtinity series back in 2019. So I am going to rank Christopher Bell first in this tier. And that might be contrarian. Not really sure. It does depend obviously on practicing qualifying, but I like him a lot. Pretty interesting Christopher Bell for this week. A.J. Almanninger and Austin Cendrick are the two quote unquote ringers in the field. But they both prove and they can run well. And they've got good equipment for this week. Almanninger with colleague Cendrick with Penske. Cendrick led a good number of laps at Kota. Almanninger finished seventh in Daytona, fifth at Kota. So I like both these guys a lot. And right now on Friday, I can't pick who I prefer. I think I'd lean Cendrick right now. But I am happy to have practice and qualifying dictate where I go. Both these guys are too good to say no. So gonna lean on practice and qualifying for Cendrick and Almanninger. But obviously, I am on board at those two guys. Kurt Busch should not be slept on. And it's possible that he goes overlooked given that Almanninger and Cendrick are right here. But Kurt Busch has had a top nine average running position for the past five row course races. He has two top five finishes in that time. He finished sixth in Sonoma as well. So I love Kurt Busch. Basically, this tier is amazing, including Bowman, who I didn't really talk about. So I will let practice and qualifying dictate how I rank this tier. But the overall thought process here is I want to be in this tier as much as possible. I want to get a lot of Bell, a lot of Almanninger, a lot of Cendrick, a lot of Busch, a lot of Bowman potentially. So I think that when I'm looking at the overall tiering from a salary perspective this week, there is a big fall off after Lugano at 11-8. So I might be pretty comfortable skipping over that second tier after Lugano and just loading up on these guys. I also would consider having a punt type driver. And we'll talk about a couple of them I'll consider later on. And allowing myself to get my two studs and then get two guys in this range. If I can make that work, that is going to be a sick build for this week. And I want to be here as often as possible. So pay close attention to this mid range on FanDuel for this week. The value tier is Michael McDowell at $7,700 through Eric Almirola at $6,600. And I think we've got some good options here too. I really, really like all three of Michael McDowell, Ross Chastain, and Chris Buscher. The highest upside guy in this range is Chastain. He is another guy whose aggressive driving style could suit him well here. He finished fourth at Kota. He was seventh in Sonoma. His average running position was top 14 in both those races. So not Fluki. He just ran really well. He has upside. I like that a lot. McDowell and Buscher are more so in the consistent camp than the upside camp. McDowell ranks 11th in aggregate average running position on road courses this year. Buscher ranks 13th. McDowell was top 10 in both Daytona and Kota. He was running really well in Sonoma before he spun in the final few laps and absolutely just torpedoed some good lineups I had. Thanks, Michael. We're back on board for this week. Buscher, top five in Daytona last year. The upside is very much better than Chastain. So Chastain is number one on this list, but both McDowell and Buscher are absolutely guys who can get you a top 10 and maybe a top five if things break their way. So this tier to me is ranked Chastain 1, McDowell 2, Buscher 3, Tyler Redick 4. He showed some at Kota, which kind of surprised me a bit. Matt DiBenedetto 5, good on road courses in the past, not as good this year. Austin Dillon 6, getting better on road courses, but still not like elite. Then Eric Almarola will be 7. The punting tier is Chase Briscoe at $6,400 on down, and there are actually a few guys here. I am very open to using this week. One of them is Chase Briscoe at $6,400. He had a 12th place average running position at Kota. He finished 3rd in Road America last year behind Cindrick and Allmendinger in the XINITY series. Stuart Haas Racing, really good speed in national, potentially signaling they might be trending up. So I think that he's more similar to Chastain than we give him credit for. Chase Briscoe, I'm hoping will show some sort of speed in practice on Saturday because I am pretty interested in him here at $6,400. Daniel Suarez has not run super well on road courses so far this year, but he did finish 12th in Sonoma, which is an improvement. They've got really good strategy in trackhouse racing with Travis Mack, a crew chief. Suarez $6,300. I think he could do well here, and I'll keep an eye on him in practice on Saturday as well. The dark course in this range to me is Ryan Priest. He has had a top 15 average running position in two of the past four road course races, converted that into a 9th place finish in Daytona, and he had some good runs on road courses in the XINITY series. So I'm going to have my eye on him at $5,000. Eric Jones is $4,900. He's kind of similar to the McDowell-Busher type guys where he's been pretty consistent. He's had good runs on road course in the past. So I'm going to monitor Jones in practice. I would say this tier is Briscoe 1, Suarez 2 because they've got better equipment than these other guys. Priest will be 3, Jones 4, Cole Custer 5. All five of those guys are at least on the map if you want to increase your exposure to the middle tier. So keep an eye on those guys. I am willing to use or consider all of them depending on how things break in practice and in qualifying. Let's finish up here at the win picks for this week. One guy above $10,000 and one below. It's really boring to pick Elliott or Larson or Truex, maybe not Truex, I guess. So I'm going to go just stick with what I said before. Joey Logano will win a road course race this year, and I think it'll happen on Sunday. It's a track where aggressiveness can pay off. Logano, willing to be aggressive, for sure. So I'll go Logano for some funsies for my win pick in the top tier for this week. Among the guys below $10,000, I do want to go with Christopher Bell. I think that Cindrick, Dinger, Kurt Busch, all those guys could do it. But Bell, to me, very interesting. I think that he is the best equipment in that group. He proved he could win in Daytona. He's won a bell cart, wrote America before, called another thing, I guess. But I would say Christopher Bell to me, someone I really want to keep my eye on for this week. And I actually think there's a little bit of value on him to win at 40 to 1 as well. So Christopher Bell on my radar very much for this week. That is all that we have here for this week here on the HeatCheck Fantasy Podcast. Should be a fun one. Again, make sure you have the schedule in your brain for this week. Be around on Sunday to edit lineups. But if you want to have some fun, do that. But I know it's annoying. But if you want to fill out plus EV lineups, you got to do it. And again, the upside is there will be more inefficient lineups in the pool this week than usual. Make sure you are subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy Podcast Feed. Wherever you get your podcast, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts. Wherever you get your podcast, you can find us. And if you like what you hear, leave us a rating and review as well. If you have questions for me, I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the FanDuel Podcast Network at FanDuel Podcast. Big thank you to everyone for tuning in for this week. Enjoy Road America. Enjoy the weekend. We'll talk to you once again next week. This has been the HeatCheck Fantasy Podcast powered by Number Fire.