Tuesday, November 24, 2015

2016 Fantasy Nascar Profile: Brad Keselowski

Welcome to TimersSports

Driver Name: Brad Keselowski

Car #: 2

Make: Ford

Season Debut: 2011 (First full season)

Number of Championships: 1

# of Career Starts: 233

# of Career Poles: 9

# of Career Wins: 17

# of Career Top 5s: 59

# of Career Top 10s: 104

# of Career DNFs: 12

# of Career laps led: 4,283

Career Average Finish: 14.8

Career Average Start: 14.6

# of 2015 Wins: 1

# of 2015 Top 5s: 9

# of 2015 Top 10s: 25

# of 2015 poles: 1

# of 2015 DNFs: 1

# of 2015 laps led: 1,184

2015 Average Finish: 11.06

2015 Average Start: 10.0

2015 Fantasy Recap: I had higher hopes for Brad Keselowski than 1 wins and 9 Top 5 finishes last offseason. Even though I expected a dropoff in production from the 2014 season. Instead of racking up a lot of top 5 finishes, he became more consistent. It always helps to be considered a safe fantasy option, but he also lost fantasy value. Considering he a elite driver in our sport. Just top 10 won't cut by most people standards. Still 25 Top 10 finishes in 36 races is pretty impressive by itself. That what kept Brad relevant in fantasy this season. His big problem was finishing out races, and I pointed this out several times during the season. He often had a top 5 car heading into the race, but could not finish there on Sunday most weekends.

Strong tracks: Chicago, Phoenix, New Hampshire and Las Vegas.

Weak tracks: Sonoma, Atlanta and ACS

Additional Info:  In 2015, Keselowski's lone win came at Auto Club Speedway (ACS) aka California. An 2.0 mile racetrack located in Fontona,CA . This was probably the last track I would expect him to find victory lane at. In his previous 6 starts (all with Penske), he have only 1 Top 20 finish. His win remains his sole top 10 finish at this 2-mile racetrack. Also was the first time he recorded a driver rating over 95.0.  I am very interested how he fairs in 2016 at ACS. Did last season's race help him over the hump? Good question. We will find out.

Yahoo Grouping Prediction: A-list Grouping Tier

Overall Value Prediction: Consistency with top 5 upside

2016 Fantasy Outlook: I expect a lot of good things from both of the Penske cars in 2016. I fully expect Brad to visit victory lane least twice. I also expect him to remain consistent. The one thing both of the Penske's cars do well is consistency finish in the top 10. On any given weekend, Brad Keselowski can pretty much be locked in for a top 10, if everything goes according. Most weekends, he will have the potential to finish inside the top 5 as well. During the 2015 season, his biggest flaw was making late race mistakes. Plain and simple that what held him back most often. Not always though. Sometimes he just faded, and that is reasonable. The one thing, I am wondering is how well will the 2 and 22 adopt to the 2016 rule package? Based on what I saw at Darlington and Kentucky, I would say they are in for a very strong season. If the package is similar what we saw there.

**All Stats are from DriverAverages.com

Twitter - @JeffNathans