Someone tell Dorothy to breathe because NASCAR is back in Kansas for the Digital Ally 400. There's a lot to love about Kansas, starting with the slingshot arm QB Patrick Mahomes for the Kansas City Chiefs. Arthur Bryant's Barbecue is iconic on the Kansas City Barbecue scene and Kansas Speedway is one of NASCAR'S youngest Intermediate tracks that gives fans a great show year in and year out. Last season, Kevin Harvick and Chase Elliott posted wins here and out of these two drivers I would be comfortable leaning on Elliott to pull the repeat over Harvick based on how they've both been racing this season. Harvick finished the final practice Friday with a speed of 177.282 and was accompanied in the Top 10 with two other teammates from Stewart Haas Racing (Aric Almirola and Clint Bowyer). Stewart Haas Racing has a good chance of pulling off their first win of the season Saturday night but my money isn't on Harvick. Digital Ally 400 - Starting Lineup (#4) Kevin Harvick - Ford (#10) Aric Almirola - Ford (#14) Clint Bowyer - Ford (#41) Daniel Suarez - Ford (#9) Chase Elliott - Chevrolet (#18) Martin Truex Jr - Toyota (#24) William Byron - Chevrolet (#42) Kyle Larson - Chevrolet (#2) Brad Keselowski - Ford (#88) Alex Bowman - Chevrolet (#20) Erik Jones - Toyota (#43) Bubba Wallace - Chevrolet (#18) Kyle Busch - Toyota (#1) Kurt Busch - Chevrolet (#13) Ty Dillon - Chevrolet (#21) Paul Menard - Ford (#11) Denny Hamlin - Toyota (#48) Jimmie Johnson - Chevrolet (#12) Ryan Blaney - Ford (#22) Joey Logano - Ford (#17) Ricky Stenhouse Jr - Ford (#3) Austin Dillon - Chevrolet (#34) Michael McDowell - Ford (#32) Corey Lajoie - Ford (#00) Landon Cassill - Chevrolet (#8) Daniel Hemric - Chevrolet (#37) Chris Buescher - Chevrolet (#6) Ryan Newman - Ford (#95) Matt DiBenedetto - Toyota (#31) Tyler Reddick - Chevrolet (#47) Ryan Preece - Chevrolet (#52) Bayley Currey - Chevrolet (#38) David Ragan - Ford (#77) Quin Houff - Chevrolet (#36) Matt Tifft - Ford (#15) Ross Chastain - Chevrolet (#51) Cody Ware - Ford (#46) Joey Gase - Chevrolet (#66) Timmy Hill - Toyota (#27) Reed Sorenson - Chevrolet DFS Lineup Picks - DraftKings, FanDuel Chase Elliott #9 (DraftKings $11,000 | FanDuel $13,200) The Young Gun is coming off a Top 5 finish at Dover, and since his victory at Talladega its easy to see that Chase has momentum. Kansas Speedway is one of Elliott's better tracks. In last year's race here he finished 12th after starting 17th from the pole and took the win in the October race. Hendrick Motorsports in general seems to be finding their ground and I always like to ride the lightning while it's striking. I'll be throwing a good chunk of my DraftKings and FanDuel salary on him this weekend. Ryan Blaney #12 (DraftKings $9,300 | FanDuel $12,200) The Team Penske driver that hasn't won a race yet this season is the NASCAR nostalgia lover Ryan Blaney. Blaney has a great record in Kansas, and pairing that with the equipment Penske has, he's a must play for me this weekend. Many can argue that the new package erases previous success when setting lineups, but one thing you cant erase is how well a driver knows a track. Blaney has finished inside the Top 10 in five out of eight career Kansas races. His qualifying position should provide some nice fantasy points if all goes as planned on race day, and I'm looking for another Top 10 from Blaney. Erik Jones #20 (DraftKings $8,900 | FanDuel $9,800) I'm Jonesin' for some Erik Jones this week! In both practices, Jones finished inside the Top 15 and had a slight speed increase in the second practice, finishing 12th with a speed of 176.223. Jones has proven that he races well at Intermediate tracks, placing inside the Top 10 at both Atlanta and Texas this season. Since he started riding full time with Joe Gibbs Racing, Jones has placed inside the Top 10 and the Top 5 at this track. With Denny Hamlin having a bit of bad luck recently I'm looking at Jones to pick up the slack and accompany Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch as the best running cars for JGR. Clint Bowyer #14 (DraftKings $8,500 | FanDuel $11,500 ) You already knew I was going to select one SHR driver and Clint Bowyer is most definitely my guy. In a weird way I feel like he's slowly taking over as the new driver to watch on the team with him having the most success since Texas this season. Strangely, Bowyer hasn't had much success at his home track, but something feels different this year. With all four SHR cars at the front of the pack, its going to be a sight to see come Saturday night, but I'm all systems go with Bowyer. Sean Engel is also feeling Bowyer this week and talks about him and some others in this weeks Revvin' Up video on RotoBallers' Youtube Channel. For any and all fantasy NASCAR questions, find me on Twitter @GarageGuyChase. Good luck RotoBallers! More Fantasy NASCAR Analysis The Keys to Weekly NASCAR DFS Success Our DFS NASCAR Premium Package features Sean Engel, who won his sixth career tournament at Bristol, and had the top lineup in seven contests and 10 top-two finishes. Be sure to use his weekly NASCAR DFS rankings, updated regularly. Chase Holden's DFS picks at Martinsville and Texas were tops in the industry, and we also have two-time FSWA Racing Writer of the Year Daniel Dobish and two-time Racing Writer of the Year finalist Scott Engel in the crew. Set your winning DFS lineups with our award-winning team, and use promo code GARAGE for a discount.<doc-sep>Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Brad Keselowski earned his third win of the season, Alex Bowman recorded his third consecutive runner-up finish and Kyle Busch failed to set a record for top-10 finishes to start a season in Saturday night’s Digital Ally 400 at Kansas Speedway. Keselowski is now tied with Busch with a series-leading three wins apiece in the first 12 races as the 2019 campaign reaches the one-third mark. The top 10 was comprised of seven Chevrolets, two Fords and one Toyota (third-place Erik Jones). Click here for the full race results. Joey Logano finished 15th but took over the lead in the Cup points standings. He leads now-former points leader Kyle Busch, who finished 30th, by nine points. Kevin Harvick is third, 38 points behind Logano. Click here for updated point standings. Follow @JerryBonkowski<doc-sep>One of the biggest surprises of the 2019 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season has been Stewart-Haas Racing pitching a victory lane shutout. Ford's best team throughout most of 2018, an organization that put 100 percent of its four-car operation in the final eight of the NASCAR playoffs, has started the year an awkward 0-for-11. It’s weird considering SHR has still brought decent speed. Each of their four cars sits solidly in playoff position; none of them is worse than 12th in the point standings. Offseason pickup Daniel Suarez, replacing Kurt Busch, has worked in seamlessly with this quartet; Kevin Harvick is the only driver not with Penske or Joe Gibbs Racing sitting inside the top five in points. Overall, this group has 10 top-5 finishes through the first three months of the season, accumulating a total most teams would beg for. But this sport is a game of expectations and SHR, after jumping over and jumpstarting Ford prior to the 2017 season, expects to be in title contention. So it's notable Harvick is without a top-3 finish through this point in the year, a first for him in his sixth season driving for SHR. Aric Almirola, last season’s Cinderella darling has more DNFs (two) than top-5 finishes (one). Clint Bowyer has suffered through terrible luck, posting poor superspeedway finishes and fighting through circumstances that stifled victories at Texas and Richmond. All the while, Penske has emerged front and center as Ford's first-class operation. Joey Logano snuck up on Harvick and the SHR bunch, emerging from Homestead-Miami Speedway last November as the series champion. Brad Keselowski has already won twice this year and leads the series in laps led (677). That's more than twice the total of SHR's entire four-car fleet. So the Kansas race Saturday night (May 11) is a chance for SHR to get on track heading into NASCAR's All-Star Break. The team brought a little extra to single-car qualifying, sweeping the top four spots to earn precious track position with NASCAR's passing-at-a-premium new handling package. When was the last time SHR went 1-2-3-4? Talladega last fall, a restrictor plate masterpiece for the organization where they put a clinic on the rest of the field. Can lightning strike twice with this type of dominating performance early on in the weekend? Harvick happens to be this race's defending champion and Bowyer, a Kansas native, is desperate for victory at his hometown track. "We have done everything with what we feel like are not superior cars," Harvick said of his season to date. "The whole organization, engine shop, team, you can see a vast improvement across the board from our cars this week. We knew we were off at the beginning of the year and they have done nothing but work and work and work and work." Can their efforts pay off in race trim? You can tell Harvick is tired of being asked when he’s going to win. No one in racing likes to run second and this group has spent the entire year a step behind. Saturday night is their best chance this year to step up. Digital Ally 400 Time: 7:30 p.m. ET (Saturday) Track: Kansas Speedway (Kansas City, Kan.) TV: FS1 Radio: MRN, SIRIUS XM Channel 90 Who's at the Front: Martin Truex Jr. Truex took control of a rain-delayed race at Dover International Speedway Monday despite starting from the rear of the field. In what was perhaps the most difficult track to pass on all season, he marched through to the front, passing Alex Bowman in the final lap of stage two and cruising ahead to an eventual 9.5-second victory. Truex now has three career wins at DIS, two of which were following rainouts (the other was his first career win in 2007). Most importantly, he’s won two out of the last three Cup races while becoming nice and comfy in his new home at Joe Gibbs Racing. An honorable mention goes to Bowman, runner-up at Dover and for a second straight week in the Cup Series. A guy without a top-10 finish through the first nine races has catapulted himself from 21st to 13th in points ever since. Who's at the Back: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. A solid start to the 2019 season has unraveled for Stenhouse over the past month. Scraping the outside wall at Dover led to a 33rd-place result, his third wreck in the last four races that leaves him languishing at 21st in Cup Series points. What's discouraging is two of these incidents came at Bristol at Talladega, arguably Stenhouse's two best tracks on the circuit. It makes a 37-point deficit up to Erik Jones for the final playoff spot that much harder to make up; Daytona may be a win-or-else scenario for the No. 17 team. The success of Roush Fenway Racing's team car, the No. 6 with Ryan Newman makes these struggles stand out that much more. News Briefs NASCAR announced a small tweak to their 2019 rules package this week that increases the use of aero ducts at select tracks. Pocono Raceway, Darlington Raceway and the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway will now use the ducts that NASCAR required with their 550-horsepower package at other tracks. That change wasn't the move many in NASCAR seemed to hope for after sharp criticism drew attention to their 2019 package after Dover. Kyle Busch simply said, "This package sucks" while others, like Cup Series owner Bob Leavine, echoed those comments. It was a very difficult weekend to pass overall, it seemed, with just three lead changes in the Dover Xfinity Series race followed by Truex's 9.5-second win. To be fair, it's notable Truex and second-place finisher Bowman started at the back of the field in a race people claimed no one could pass. Former NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series owner Mike Mittler passed away from cancer Friday at the age of 67. Mittler, one of the series' original owners, became the launching pad for a number of NASCAR careers.<doc-sep>The Telegraph Two of the surprise packages of this clay-court season have been British – initially Dan Evans, who made a deep run in Monte Carlo, and more lately Cameron Norrie, who played his second final in three weeks on Sunday. Unfortunately, Norrie wasn’t able to land a maiden ATP title in Lyon. But then he was up against Stefanos Tsitsipas, who has been the dominant force of 2021 outside the slams, and now stands at No 1 in the table of most rankings points gained since January 1. Nevertheless, it had been a hugely creditable effort for Norrie to go this far, especially when you consider that he took out top seed Dominic Thiem on Thursday, and then trounced big-hitting Russian Karen Khachanov in Saturday’s semi-final, losing only two games in the process. Norrie has come to clay late in his career, but it feels like this is developing into his favourite surface. He has one of the heaviest left-handed forehands in the game, loaded with top-spin, and uses it like a miniature version of Rafael Nadal. The result has been a tally of 14 wins and only four losses since he began his European clay-court swing in Barcelona. So while the French Open, which starts next Sunday, has traditionally been a graveyard of British hopes, there are reasons to hope that this year’s event could deliver some more positive results. Norrie’s previous final in Estoril had been a nervewracking affair which he eventually lost on a deciding-set tie-break to the more experienced Spaniard Albert Ramos-Vinolas. Sunday was more straightforward for Tsitsipas, who needed only 69 minutes to hammer home a 6-3, 6-3 victory. It was Tsitsipas’ second title of the clay-court sequence, after he won Monte Carlo in mid-April, taking out Evans in the semi-final along the way. He has become a serious contender to upset the establishment – specifically Nadal and Novak Djokovic – at Roland Garros over the next few weeks. “I felt in good shape from the beginning of the tournament,” said Tsitsipas afterwards. “I am proud of today’s match, I knew it would be a difficult one against Cameron, who has been showing great tennis this week. He has been winning against good players and showing what the left hand can do on clay. “It was not an easy match today. I had to handle the nerves and I am proud of my performance and the way I stayed focused towards my goal.” On this year’s results, meanwhile, both Evans and Norrie stand among the world’s 20 most successful men. Evans is at No 16 and Norrie No 14. The next challenge for them both is to convert that ATP Tour form into a deep run at a major.<doc-sep>
The Monster Energy Cup Series moves to Kansas Speedway for the Digital Ally 400, a Saturday night race. The MENCS boys can’t seem to catch a break over the past couple of weeks. The weather forecast for Saturday’s race calls for temperatures in the mid-60’s with a 40 percent chance of showers, so we’ll keep an eye to the sky for a potential delay and/or postponement. Who is going to win at Kansas Speedway? All eyes will be on Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick (+700). While Harvick hasn’t been hitting on all cylinders like he was during his dominant 2018 season, he still has eight top-10 finishes across his past nine starts, including five fourth-place finishes. Happy leads all drivers with three wins, a 9.7 Average-Finish Position, eight Top 5s, 14 Tops 10s and 751 laps led to lead all active drivers. NASCAR’s Loop Data also shows Harvick with a 126.0 Driver Rating over the past five Kansas starts. Joe Gibbs Racing driver Kyle Busch (+350) was not happy with the new rules package at Dover last week, but he still managed a 10th-place showing. But generally, an unhappy Rowdy is bad news for the rest of the field. He is shown in second place with a 114.7 Driver Rating over the past five Kansas starts, and he has run 97.2 percent of his laps inside the Top 15 during the span. He was a runner-up in the last Kansas race in the fall, and he has eight consecutive top-10 finishes at the track, including six top-5 showings. JGR’s Martin Truex Jr. (+600) won at Dover on Monday, and he could make it two in a row at Kansas. MTJ swept the two Kansas races in 2017 en route to his first-career series championship, and he has four straight top-5 showings at the track. Loop Data shows him third in Driver Rating (114.6) over the past five starts at Kansas, posting 208 laps led with 92.3 percent run inside the Top 15. If you’re looking for slightly longer odds, Penske Racing’s Ryan Blaney (+1000) is a good bet. He has a 106.5 Driver Rating to lead his teammates, and he has 149 laps led with 88.2 percent of his laps inside the Top 15, posting a 13.0 AFP over the past five Kansas starts. Blaney was fourth in the spring ’17 race, third in the fall ’17 race and seventh last fall, sandwiched around a DNF last spring. Kansas Speedway long-shot bet Wood Brothers driver Paul Menard (+10000) is worth a small bet to win. Every now and then he shows up and registers a top-10 showing at Kansas. Even if you bet him for a top-10 finish you can still make a little cheddar. Menard has finished as high as third at Kansas, and he has a respectable 18.5 AFP in 20 career starts with 24 laps led. Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Dillon (+6000) also has a decent 16.9 AFP in 11 starts with three top-10s, and he is worth a small-unit bet. Follow Joe on Twitter @JoeWilliamsVI