Hello and WELCOME everyone to ADPS Championship week!
The dress rehersals and month of media build up are coming to an end and there's no better finale venue than the Homestead Miami Speedway!
Today's blog will focus on the championship clinching scenarios for our points leader, Lindsey Dietz.
Lindsey Dietz, despite missing the ADPS kick off race in Daytona, has been on a tear all season long and that 6 Wines Racing team has been a WAR WAGON all year, picking up 3 wins at New Hampshire, Darlington, and Pikes Peak.
Points (aftet 28 races) - 709
Wins - 3
Top 5s - 9
Top 10s - 13
Poles - 0
Championship clinching scenarios :
Win Race
It's over. There's nobody who can touch Dietz if she wins her 4th race of the season. That's 102 points at minimum and 108 at maximum. The max anyone would likely get is 88. Win the race, win the title.
If she finishes 1 to 4 spots behind Taddy and Taddy does not win
Dietz wins. With Homestead being a double points event, it'll be that much more critical to keep the 25 within her sights at all times. She could potentially win by 1 point, but that will rely on cercumstances palying out and at the press point? We don't know how this race is going to go.
If all championship 4 drivers DNF
This scenario is VERY unlikely to happen, but in the off chances it does happen and ALL FOUR of the Championship racers crash out (which would make for a very disapointing finale), everything stays leveled out and Dietz will hold the title over Evan Taddy by the 17 point gap she has coming in.
X-Factors
The X-factors for the championship 4 are varied, so let's break down the X-factors for the 6 team :
Evan Taddy
If Taddy wins OR he leads at least 1 lap and finishes 5 or more spots ahead of Dietz, Taddy wins. The 1 to 4 postions behind Taddy range benefits Dietz, but if Taddy wins, it won't matter where Dietz finishes or if she even led a lap. Taddy winning would garuentee him at least 102 points (as it is a double points event) minimum and Dietz, giving her every benfit of the doubt, if she doesn't lead a lap and finishes 2nd, only scores 80 points. That is a 22 point swing in Evan's favor. Even if she leads a lap, it's a 20 point swing in Evan's favor if he sees the checkered flag first.
If Evan were to lead the most laps enroute to victory, he scores 108 points and Dietz would still not have enough to keep Taddy from winning. Taddy would have his moment in the spot light on a maximum 28 point swing and at minimum 26 point swing, and that 26 is only if Dietz leads a lap.
Our stats team has concluded that the only way where Taddy wins the race but not the title is this : if Taddy wins, Dietz could lead a lap, lead most laps, and finish 2nd to score a nice rounded 86 points. That is a 16 point gap and Taddy loses by 1. In this given scenario, Dietz would have to finish 3rd or lower for Taddy to win the title.
And Evan won't go down quietly as he has demonstrated with his win at Bristol. He also finished top 10 at Bristol, Pikes Peak, and came back from a nasty crash in Martinsville to finish 3rd to put himself in this situation. We have seen Taddy take some halacious hits (see the first caution from the Fast Lane 250 at for an example), Taddy came back from a very tough road, that includes a points penalty from Watkins Glen, to even be in this battle. If anyone can knock down the war machine known as the 6 team, Taddy could.
Nate Wines
Being the owner of the 6 team already made Nate Wines an easy X-factor. What makes this even more of a worry for Dietz is that Nate Wines held the points lead down for a really long time and rarely relinquished it except for a handful of times to Alan Mooch, which sparked an epic showdown between the short track snipers that spanned over the course of weeks in the middle part of the season.
Making this even more complicated is that Nate Wines is no slouch on the intermediates. The last we raced at an intermediate track, Nate Wines and his 21 team hauled ass and finished in the top 10. Prior to that was Darlington, the 2nd race Dietz won, where and he was able to haul ass and finish 5th.
But the true nature of Nate Wines being an X-factor is that Nate is also a glass cannon. For every impressive run he has had, he had some real bad runs. We'll go more in depth about those when we talk about Nate Wines' X-factors, but to put it bluntly : when Nate's off his game, he was *way* off his game.
Alan Mooch
While Mooch may be in a worse spot than Wines in of the title fight, but that 9 team can not be over looked as a X-Factor for Dietz as Mooch and Wines had a multi-week full blown war for the points lead in the middle section of the season that we mentioned when talking about Wines. Not only was Mooch in a multi-week war with Wines in the mid-section of the season, we have seen the 9 team get knocked down time and time again only to come back more determined to fight.
Making this even more scary is that Alan Mooch has gone on record saying he has taken advantage of the month off and he has been working on his intermediate racing. He also says he is confident that a top 10 finish with a 4th place in points *is the worst case scenario for the 9 team*. If Alan's saying that? Deitz might have more on plate than she can handle with the 9 car.
But there is a flipside to Alan being a massive X-factor for Dietz, and it's also a X-factor we'll discuss in further detail when we get to Alan's clinching scenarios. So to make this short : Alan Mooch, despite being one of the top level drivers, has had taken the most beatings of anyone in the ADPS Championship 4.
Yellow flags
This is an X-factor for everyone racing for the Championship and in the race as well, so we'll get it out of the way here so we don't have to bring this up later on : there are multiple ways the yellows can fall and there is a likely possibility we won't see any yellow flags at all. If we do see yellow flags, it could change another X-factor that we'll talk about in a minute. The drivers must be ready for all sorts of situations, even if no yellows come out, it still makes the yellow flag a major X-factor that will make this race unpredictable.
Pit strategy
Much like the yellow flags, pit strategy is also a huge factor that can make or break a race not only for the Championship 4, but also everyone in the race. If you play the strategy right, the strategy will pay in divedends and you will very likely keep everyone in their place while you assert your pit crew as the best and your crew cheif if a geneius. Like wise, if you play the strategy wrong, buckle up, because it's going to be a very long day for everyone
If green flag stops come into play, the crew chiefs will have to stay on top of their game to assure they don't get caught on the line.
Lapped Cars
Another X-factor for all 35 drivers in the race and not just the championship 4 : lap traffic. We all know we scream bloody murder about the slow cars that get in the way of the leader, but there are times where the lapped cars *do* get out of the way of the leader. This also depends on how fast a top level contender catches a much slower car.
To wrap this up, Lindsey Dietz and her 6 team are on the edge of history as the first ever female driver to win a championship in stock car racing. If they do pull this off, it will also be the historic *first* ever ADPS champion crowned. It will also be interesting to see if she will drive the number 1 as the champion gets first dibs at the number which ADPS executives have called "a badge of honor".
Tune in later on tonight when we talk about Evan Taddy, but for now, we're g out from the Homestead Miami Speedway.
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