Well race fans, here we go! Another NASCAR Sprint Cup series is about to get underway, along with another year of Fantasy racing for the fans. This year I'll again be playing NASCAR Fantasy Live offered at NASCAR.COM. I enjoy how the game is not just about finishing position or head to head rivalries, but rather about a drivers performance throughout the race. There are some things staying the same this year, and a few things that are different. Let's dive in and take a look at how the battle will shape up this year.
First of all NASCAR Fantasy Live will consist of different leagues that are either public or private. Each league will have an even number of players between 8 and 16. A league must be full according to the number of players set by league creator before the league becomes official and player can choose their team drivers. A private league can be converted into a public league to fill remaining spots.
Once the league is locked, players are ready to pick their drivers. Each player must pick 5 drivers, and you must stay within your salary cap of $100 for your whole team. Drivers' starting values this year seem to range between $1.00 and $27.00. During the season drivers' values will fluctuate, but your salary cap remains $100. However, if you choose 5 drivers that are worth exactly $100 total, and after race 1 each one's value goes up by $1.00, you will be allowed to keep your drivers. Your Value will be $105, but you bought the drivers at $100, so therefore you are within your salary cap. However, let's say you decide to drop Driver B who you bought for $6, but is now worth $7. This will drop your value down to $98, leaving you only $2 to replace your driver. It may be advantageous early in the season to pick a driver valued low who you predict will gain value over time. On the other hand if after race 1 all 5 drivers lose value by $1 a piece, your value is now $95 but your salary cap is still $100. In this case it would be a good idea to release all drivers, and buy them back at the cheaper price. This gives you $5 to spare and it may mean you can upgrade your 5th driver to someone even better. Then again if you picked all 5 drivers and they all lost value, you may want to change more than just the 5th one.
One new rule for 2012 is the addition of the Inactive Driver Penalty. In 2011 some players took advantage of a certain strategy to buy the cheapest 5th driver possible, and often times that driver wouldn't be in the race that particular weekend. This could prove beneficial in two areas. First of all it would leave more money to spend on your other four drivers, and also it would guarantee that your fifth driver could not end the race with negative points (something that can happen frequently to a low cost driver). This year with the addition of the Inactive Driver Penalty, if a driver on your roster does not start the race, you will immediately be assessed a 25 point penalty for that driver that week. Meaning you can no longer hedge your bets and guarantee yourself a driver who won't lose points.
Now let's get to the real scoring. The first category of points awarded are based on finishing position of your drivers. The points are the same as NASCAR Sprint Cup points (minus bonus points). This means a first place finish equals 43 points, a second place equals 42, and so on all the way down to a 43rd place finish equaling 1 positive point. In this category you can't lose points, but it's also not always your biggest positive point category either.
Next up is Place Differential. This is a straight forward calculation of the places gained by a driver during the race. If the driver starts 10th and finishes 5th, he will have a Place Differential of positive 5. Likewise drivers on the pole can easily end up with a negative number here since there's no way to go but down and it's more common for pole winners to fall back than to hang on and win. As we'll discuss in a minute, laps led by a driver can be a very high point category, and at certain tracks sitting on the pole almost guarantees a few laps led early on. However you must decide if they can lead enough laps early on to balance out how many positions they may lose later.
New this year is the category of Pit Road. Last year this category was Pass Differential, and alongside Place Differential was a category designed to award a driver points for passes made during the race. This was basically any places gained during GREEN flag racing. If a driver lost 5 positions on pit road, but made them back up under green then their pass total could be 5 points higher than their overall place differential. This year the category will be calculated the opposite. This will reward pit crews by rewarding how many positions they help a driver gain under a YELLOW flag stop. Green flag pitstops will not be counted. This is going to be interesting this year. If a driver is involved in any incident and has to take a few extra minutes on pit road, they may rally back to a top 5 or 10, but may have lost 25 positions on pit road during their incident. My personal belief is that coupled with Place Differential, this category will not be worth that much overall throughout the year. Qualifying is rarely indicative of finishing position. Some drivers just qualify better, some just race better, but there may be a few drivers who have a history of bad qualifying efforts, but good finishes that could earn you points in these two categories.
Now on to the categories with the most points on the table. Laps Led and Fastest Laps. Laps Led awards drivers one half point for each lap of the race led. A lot more than NASCARS 1 point for the first lap led, and 2 points if you lead the most. For races like Daytona where there are only 200 laps (or 160 in July). There will be 100 points on the table (or only 80 in July). On a 400 mile race at an intermediate 1.5 mile track there's usually 267 laps for 133.5 points on the table. Then there is Bristol and Martinsville, the two shortest distance races, but the most laps. 500 laps at these tracks means 250 points on the table in each of the categories for Laps Led and Fastest Laps. This can be big money for a driver who gets out and leads a lot.
Fastest Laps is just what it sounds like and is scored much like Laps Led. For each lap that your driver is the fastest on the track, he will earn one half point (0.5). One thing to point out is only green flag laps are scored. Take a look at the 2011 final driver point totals for NASCAR Fantasy Live and compare them to the real NASCAR Sprint Cup Points. You will see a pretty big difference. The in race performance of leading laps and running fast plays a much bigger role than simply finishing position. Kyle Busch missed a race but still was the highest earning driver in Fantasy Live 2011. Kyle had over 2554 points compared to Tony Stewart's 2021. That's 25% more. Carl Edwards who tied Stewart in the real Sprint Cup points came in 7th in Fantasy Live with only 1880. Kyle topped him by more than 35%!
All in all, the great thing about Fantasy Live is the ability to change your drivers each week, but no mandate to. You can keep the same 5 all season long (unlike other leagues that have limits on use) or you can switch every race. Switching each race provides the possibility that at the end of the year your total score is more than the top 5 drivers combined (since the top 5 overall won't be the same top 5 as each individual week). But remember to watch your salary cap when you do make changes. Let's go have some fun and get revved up for the 2012 season! And just maybe we'll be making a trip to Vegas!
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