Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway
Front Runners highlights the drivers that lead laps, run fast laps, and run inside the top 10, 5, & 3 the most at correlated track types.
This week I’ve added a new data column to Front Runners. The far right column is the driver’s average running position for the races in the dataset. This is weighted by laps run, so running 301 laps at New Hampshire with an average position of 15 will have three times the weight of running 100 laps with an average position of 10 at Phoenix before wrecking out. It also only accounts for laps run, so drivers are not penalized for 200 laps in 36th after the lap 100 wreck.
The NASCAR Cup Series makes its second trip of the year to Richmond Raceway on Sunday. Richmond is a .75-mile D-shaped oval, with limited banking. Of the short flat tracks it has by far the most tire wear and with Sunday projected to be in the 90s, fall off should be a major issue for teams to contend with. There is nothing fancy about projecting Richmond, Richmond itself is a big predictor, but performance at the other short flat tracks of Phoenix and New Hampshire is also important. With eight races in the books on these tracks in the Gen 7 Car I’m just focused on those three venues.
Below we have three datasets, all Gen 7 short flat tracks, the three 2023 races so far, and the three Richmond races.
The charts below are sorted by percentage of laps led by default. There are also a few more columns that you can choose to display but for ease of display those columns are hidden by default.
Laps run inside the Top 10, 5, 3, and led as percentage laps driver completed at Phoenix (3 races), Richmond (3 races), and New Hampshire (2 races)
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Laps run inside the Top 10, 5, 3, and led as percentage laps driver completed in 2023 at Phoenix, Richmond, and New Hampshire (1 race each)
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Laps run inside the Top 10, 5, 3, and led as percentage laps driver completed at Richmond in 2022 (2 races) and 2023 (1 race)
[wpdatatable id=119]
Thanks for checking out the Front Runners! Let’s WIN THE RACE!
