Following Chase Elliott‘s “victory” in Pocono, the NASCAR Cup Series heads to Indianapolis for the Verizon 200 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course. Let’s dive into the track information NASCAR DFS drivers need to know, what to expect for this weekend’s running of the Verizon 200 at Indianapolis and some early NASCAR fantasy picks.
NASCAR DFS Preview: Verizon 200
Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course Information
- Track: Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course
- Location: Speedway, Indiana
- Length: 2.439 miles (asphalt)
- Banking: n/a
- Best corollary tracks: Charlotte Roval, Daytona Road Course
- Dominator Points:
- DraftKings: 20.5 – laps led, 36.9 – fastest laps
- FanDuel: 8.2 – laps led
- Past winners: A.J. Allmendinger (2021)
- Betting favorite: Chase Elliott +450
- Entry List: 37 drivers, including Joey Hand (15), A.J. Allmendinger (16), Loris Hezemans (26), Josh Bilicki (77) and Josh Williams (78)
- Weather: High of 83, mostly sunny
- Watch: USA
- Listen: MRN (MRN, NASCAR.com, NASCAR Sirius/XM Channel 90)
On Track Schedule (All Times Eastern)
- Saturday, July 30
- 9:30 a.m.: practice
- 10:30 a.m.: qualifying
- Sunday, July 31
- 2:30 p.m.: green flag (15/35/82 laps)
2022 Verizon 200 NASCAR DFS Picks
2022 Points Standings
After the checkered flag had waved, everyone in Long Pond, Pennsylvania had thought that Denny Hamlin had tied up win totals with Chase Elliott at three apiece. However, not long after, NASCAR officials disqualified both Denny Hamlin and second-place finisher Kyle Busch for illegal tape found on the front of both vehicles. The disqualification of both the first and second-place drivers handed Elliott the victory and now gives him four for the 2022 season, twice as many as he had for the entire 2021 season. Even without the victory, Sunday was going to mark his fifth-straight top-five finish and with the Indianapolis Grand Prix on the horizon, anything but a sixth would be a disappointment for the 9 team.
With no new winner from Pocono, the playoff standings remain static. However, the gap between Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick has now widened to 83 points putting even more pressure on Harvick to secure a win in the coming weeks. With his 35th-place finish at Pocono, Ryan Blaney did yield some ground to Truex and the rest of the contingent currently out of the playoffs, but 105 points is still a sizable gap over Harvick assuming two surprise winners don’t surface over the final four races in the regular season.
NASCAR Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course Preview
For the second-straight season, the NASCAR Cup Series returns to the road course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. While racing on the road course, as opposed to the historic 2.5-mile oval, may feel like sacrilege to some – the fact remains that ticket sales had been down for years for NASCAR Cup Series oval races at Indianapolis and the owners of Indianapolis (pre-Roger Penske) had to find a way to inject enthusiasm into this weekend or else Indianapolis was destined to lose this weekend on the NASCAR calendar.
In the inaugural version of this race, things were pretty tepid, to begin with. The race lead changed hands eight times among drivers such as William Byron, Chase Briscoe, Tyler Reddick, Michael McDowell, Brad Keselowski, Elliott and Austin Dillon. Through the first two segments, the only yellow flags thrown were for the end-of-stage breaks, despite this being the first time many of these drivers had driven on the Indianapolis Road Course. On laps 42 and 74, cautions were thrown for debris in turn six; a mere foreshadowing of what was to come.
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After the green flag came back out at lap 77, the field continued on for two laps before pandemonium struck again in turn six as nearly a quarter of the field wrecked. The giant turtle-shell-style speed bump in turn six, a devastating deterrent that had turned the prior day’s Xfinity race into an attrition-fueled survival race, was now rearing its ugly head once again. With everyone spaced out initially in the race, the speed bump was of no issue and had only caused minor damage earlier on. However, now with the field bunched back together, a few loose cars meant a giant pile-up. After ten laps of clean-up, the race was pushed into overtime and restarted on lap 90. Once more, as drivers sailed off into turn six, the turtle shell claimed more victims, this time collecting seven drivers and bringing out the caution for another four laps.
Right before the string of cautions, Denny Hamlin had taken the lead on lap 75 and held it through the restarts, poised to grab his first win of 2022. However, Hamlin wasn’t the only driver eyeing a much-needed victory that day. Briscoe, a former Xfinity winner on the Indianapolis Road Course, had been running strong all day leading the race early and was sitting in third during overtime. After the final restart, Briscoe had found his way to Hamlin’s rear and turned up the pressure hoping to find an inch of room that would allow him to muscle up Hamlin and take the lead. With no entry point, Briscoe gave Hamlin the chrome horn and turned Hamlin with two laps remaining. With the lead, Briscoe continued to drive with reckless abandon, losing the lead through an s-turn and spinning out yielding the lead to A.J. Allmendinger. However, even if Briscoe had held on to the lead, NASCAR had already deemed Briscoe’s punting of Hamlin worthy of a black flag and parked him, giving him a 26th-place finish.
Concluding Indianapolis Grand Prix Thoughts
In the end, the inaugural Indy GP played out like a superspeedway race with the results totally skewed by two “big ones” and a wreck among the leaders in overtime that handed the lead and win to a driver who had just been able to survive near the front all day. Thus, don’t worry about these 2021 results too much and weigh road races, dating back to the start of 2021, as a whole to get a better picture of where drivers stand and how they project towards Sunday. Furthermore, separating 2022 versus 2021 results should be helpful as the Generation 7 car has shown that some drivers and teams have gotten a better grip on setting up cars for road courses than in the past, i.e. Team TrackHouse.
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