Following Joey Logano‘s bump-and-run victory at Darlington, NASCAR heads westbound on I-70 to Kansas for just its second intermediate race of the season. Let’s dive into the track information NASCAR DFS players need to know, what to expect for this weekend’s running of the AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway and some early NASCAR fantasy picks.
NASCAR Kansas DFS Preview: 2022 AdventHealth 400
Kansas Speedway Information
- Track: Kansas Speedway
- Location: Kansas City, Kansas
- Length: 1.5-mile oval (asphalt)
- Banking: 17 to 20 degrees in the turns, 9 to 11 degrees on the front stretch and 5 degrees on the backstretch
- Dominator Points:
- DraftKings: 66.75 – laps led, 120.15 – fastest laps
- FanDuel: 26.7 – laps led
- Past winners: Kyle Larson (Fall 2021), Kyle Busch (Spring 2021)
- Betting favorite: Kyle Larson +600
- Entry List: All 36 Chartered Teams including J.J. Yeley (15), Noah Gragson (16) and Josh Bilicki (77)
- Weather: High of 74, partly cloudy
- Watch: FOX Sports 1
- Listen: MRN (MRN, NASCAR.com, NASCAR Sirius/XM Channel 90)
On Track Schedule (All Times Eastern)
- Saturday, May 14
- 4 p.m.: practice
- 4:35 p.m.: qualifying
- Sunday, May 15
- 3 p.m.: green flag (367 laps)
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Looking Back to Las Vegas
For the first time seemingly in months, NASCAR returns to its old bread and butter of the early 2000s, an intermediate oval. Racing action returns to the 1.5-mile oval of Kansas Speedway for the AdventHealth 400.
It does seem odd, especially in lieu of the way the calendar formerly played out, that the Cup Series has raced exactly one other intermediate oval (Las Vegas Motor Speedway) in 12 races this season. Part of the reason for this season’s small data size for gauging intermediate races is Atlanta getting transformed into a miniature version of Daytona while Texas lost its spring race to Circuit of the Americas. Thus, DFS players are poised with two options for Sunday: Judge expectations for Kansas in lieu of prior Kansas races in the 550-horsepower package or by the lone intermediate race done in the new 670-horsepower package. For those feeling spicy, they may consider combining Las Vegas and Auto Club Speedway, although Auto Club is technically a superspeedway, and an abrasive one at that.
For the sake of being able to judge both sets of aforementioned data, they are both listed in this week’s RaceSheets. However, even though it is just one race, it makes more sense to hearken back to Las Vegas as a plumbline for this Sunday.
Las Vegas 1 – 2022
For those foggy with the details, NASCAR fans will recall this as the “Hack” race wherein Alex Bowman capitalized on a late caution and led the final three laps of overtime en route to victory.
This race will also famously be the event where Kyle Busch took a parts car and nearly drove the vehicle to victory, leading 49 laps on the day. This race was also the unofficial Ross Chastain coming out party, as he surprised everyone by leading 83 laps before finishing third.
As far as trends, the lap leaders’ starting positions are reminiscent of the 2021 550-horsepower package wherein starting position did not overly dictate who were legitimate threats to lead. Las Vegas’ top lap leaders started 18th, 37th, 1st, 8th and 2nd. The stronger correlation to laps led appears to have been green flag speed rankings, as the top lap leaders ranked third, fourth, ninth, fifth and first in those metrics. All of these drivers showed top-10 speed in the short and long runs during Saturday’s practice session, something to be cognizant of Saturday evening, especially as Saturday’s practice session will mirror race time on Sunday.
Discussing roster construction this early out is a fool’s errand, but with 267 laps on tap, lineups should break down into singular- or dual-lap-leader builds, all dependent on what happens with practice and/or qualifying. The rule of thumb is, if a driver spins out during practice, there is a good chance they are sacrificing their qualifying lap in order to start fixing something that probably broke during that spin out.
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