Monday, December 05, 2016

2017 Fantasy Nascar Profile: Ty Dillon

Welcome to TimersSports

Driver Name: Ty Dillon

Car #: 13

Make: Chevy

Season Debut: 2017 (First-Full Season)

Number of Championships: 0

# of Career Starts: 18

# of Career Poles: 0

# of Career Wins: 0

# of Career Top 5s: 0 

# of Career Top 10s: 0

# of Career DNFs: 1

# of Career laps led: 3 

Career Average Finish: 23.6

Career Average Start: 27.3

# of 2016 Wins: 0

# of 2016 Top 5s: 0

# of 2016 Top 10s: 0 

# of 2016 Poles: 0

# of 2016 DNFs: 1

# of 2016 laps led: 3

2016 Average Finish: 24.0

2016 Average Start: 27.1

2016 Fantasy Recap - Ty Dillon drove the #95 car (and #14 car - sub for Smoke) in 2016 in a part-time effort to gain additional experience at the Cup level, before making the jump to Full-time. He shared the seat with Michael McDowell. Dillon had a pretty good season overall. In 11 starts, he posted an solid 24.0 average finish with 3 Top 20 finishes. Not a great top 20 rate, but still not terrible either though. He only had 7 starts prior to 2016, so that's pretty solid. Also, he only had one DNF. For a young driver in a part-time role, that's all you can really expect. Ty reminds me a lot of Austin Dillon in terms of his driving style. When Austin first arrived on the cup scene, this exactly how Austin would drive. Just logging laps and knocking out quality finishes, without tearing up racecars. In 2016, that what Ty exactly did. His was very consistent, as only one finish resulted in worse than 25th place in his first 8 races. Including 5 races in the #95 car. His last three races ended in 27th, 32nd and 33rd though. So his numbers fell off in his final couple of races, however there was a different Crew Chief atop of the #95 team during those races. I personally believe that change was more for McDowell's benefit. So maybe that explains for his worst three races. Either way, Dillon had a pretty good season. Hard to hate on him for doing what he needs to do, while posting quality results in the process.

Strong Tracks - TBD

Weak Tracks - TBD

Yahoo Grouping Tier: C-list Grouping

2017 Fantasy Outlook - There's a lot of unknowns about Ty Dillon at this point. He has a lot of expereince in the lower levels and had 11 races last season under his belt. So not like we are going in blinded, with no data at all. However, with that said he will be driving the #13 car. A raceteam that has struggled for a long time to be competitive. Casey Mears best days usually came when he finished around 20th. And 20th for him was like a top 10 finish. Most days, 25th-30th were his average day at the office. It doesn't really sound too promising for Ty Dillon, even though I expect a uptick in fantasy production than what Mears gave. But, I am not expecting a major incline though. Remember, Dillon is a pretty young driver but he should improve throughout the year. Early in the season is when you should expect his worst results. As he will have to get on same page with his new team. However, it will all come down to the performance of the #13 team. If the #13 team doesn't have significant improvement then it will definitely show down his progression. Dillon best days will likely be on the flats and shorts in 2017. Too hard to tell at the moment, as there very little data to go on. If he was put in the #31 car, I think we could have a much better idea what to expect from him. To me, we have to treat Dillon like he has never made a Cup start in his career. Because with the #13 team, that pretty much is what happening. With that said, we do know that the #13 performances pretty good on the shorter (in length) tracks. While struggling on the intermediate venues. He may have a couple standout runs on the intermediate tracks, but he will have far more bad ones than good one though.

Twitter - @JeffNathans18