FONTANA - Wrap Up

A decent day for the FNG Fantasy team slowly got worse until it finally exploded in the closing 10 laps.

Tony Stewart got aero-loose running in 3rd, killing his momentum and leaving him in a pack of cars with fresh tires. Smoke had no chance, and basically gave away 20 fantasy points within the last 10 laps. The Stewart Vs. Carl Edwards pick still ended with Edwards only being +4 Yahoo points better than Stewart thanks to Stewart leading laps.

Juan Pablo Montoya was a solid Top 10 car most of the day, faded late but was able to rebound with some aggressive driving to just sneak inside the Top 10 late. Mark Martin was a huge disappointment. I'm not sure whether to blame Martin or Lance McGrew but this team is starting to get a track record of "not being able to keep up with the track" and as the rubber got laid down, Martin got worse, so much so that Mark Martin was the worst car on the lead lap late in the race and quite frankly was in the way.

Trevor Bayne was another disappointment. Smacking the wall on Lap 3 basically ruined any chances of a good day. Bayne caught the wall 2-3 times total during the day, and on a track like California where its easy to stay out of trouble, Bayne continued to find ways to get into trouble. However I am not too devastated with getting a start-save out of Bayne with David Ragan under-performing as well, only 16 Yahoo points difference this week between the 2 drivers.

A decent 275-is point day took a hard dive with Stewart losing a ton of ground late and Martin falling to the back of the field, my team ended with 252 points and ultimately slid 9% overall in Yahoo.


Taking a look at the rest of the field:

A-LIST:
Typical Jimmie Johnson weekend, not that impressive in practice, qualifying, or the first half of the race. But the 48 got it figured out and was in contention until 0.5 mile from the checkered flag. I guarantee the 48 is going to be more motivated than ever going into Martinsville, one of his best tracks statistically.

Welcome to 2011 RCR. The entire group is finally back on track, and although I don't think Kevin Harvick had much more that a 4th-5th place car, but the late cautions and the crew chief making steady improvements vaulted the 29 to the win.

Kyle Busch was a high-risk/high-reward driver this week, and it ended with high reward, obviously picking a JGR driver on these larger tracks is a very dangerous game of Russian Roulette with both his team mates blowing motors.

B-LIST:
I should of respected Red Bull Racing more as the stats backed up their performance, but Brian Vickers lack of momentum and Kasey Kahne being all over the place in practice had me worried. This team rebounded great and will be darn near an auto-lock when it comes to Michigan.

As noted above, welcome to 2011 RCR. Clint Bowyer was the class of the B-List, as I suspect he will be often this year. Jeff Burton also, finally, got a solid finish, but lets not forget he did everything he could to throw it away with a pit road penalty, and only a rare stroke of good luck brought the caution out literally moments before he went a lap down.

Ryan Newman is the real deal and the momentum SHR should continue right through Martinsville where Newman has some pretty sporty stats.

Martin Truex Jr. continues to be a trap that people are falling into. It's not uncommon for this car to look great in practice and qualifying and even better in the early stages of a race. But NASCAR requires constant changes to your car throughout the race to keep the handling, and Truex has never been good at keeping up with a changing track, ever in his career.

C-LIST:
Paul Menard is simply dominate in the C-List this year. The biggest challenge this year will be to figure out when the rest of the C-List drivers such as David Ragan, Regan Smith, and Trevor Bayne will finish within a few spots of Menard.  Fontana appeared to have all the makings of a track where "the best of the rest" could be in the ballpark with Menard, but it wasn't the case. Only late race shuffling caused Menard to fade back to where he finished, his car was much better.