Saturday, December 09, 2017

2018 Fantasy Nascar Profile: Ricky Stenhouse Jr

Welcome to TimersSports

Driver Name: Ricky Stenhouse Jr

Car #: 17

Make: Ford

Season Debut: 2013 (First-Full Season)

Number of Championships: 0

# of Career Starts: 184

# of Career Poles: 2

# of Career Wins: 2

# of Career Top 5s: 11 

# of Career Top 10s: 26

# of Career DNFs: 18

# of Career laps led: 100

Career Average Finish: 20.5  

Career Average Start: 19.4

# of 2017 Wins: 2

# of 2017 Top 5s: 4

# of 2017 Top 10s: 9

# of 2017 Poles: 1

# of 2017 DNFs: 6 

# of 2017 laps led: 56

2017 Average Finish: 17.1

2017 Average Start: 15.9

2017 Fantasy Recap - It was a career year for Ricky Stenhouse Jr. He posted highs in wins, top 5 finishes, top 10 finishes, average finish, average start, top 20 finishes and laps led. And he had a really strong run in 2016 season, too. Obviously, his two wins in 2017 was what really set him apart from any other season he had though. Those two wins were on Daytona and Talladega, so some people will say it was just luck. But I don't believe that. Ricky is a talented wheelman with skills behind the wheel. Even at the plate tracks, it takes skill to work the draft and move through the field and then win. And not like Ricky wasn't good at other venues. He was very consistent all season long. He had a lot of good runs throughout season, he just didn't have many top 10 finishes to show. And that's okay. He's better than a lot of drivers out there!

Strong Tracks - Talladega, Bristol, Daytona, Texas and New Hampshire  

Weak Tracks - Sonoma, Watkins Glen and Indy  

Yahoo Grouping Tier Prediction: B-list Grouping

2018 Fantasy Outlook - I don't think Ricky Stenhouse Jr will back up his 2017 season. He had a career-year across the board. Not only in wins, but pretty much everywhere in terms of major stats. I just don't think he will win in 2017, but I also think his number of top 10 finishes and top 20 finishes will decrease from last season. This is not any direspect towards Ricky Stenhouse Jr and I really mean that. It is just logic that Ricky won't be able to produce the numbers he had from a year ago. He had 23 Top 15 finishes and 26 Top 20 finishes. See that consistency right there? About 3/4 of the season, he finished inside the top 15! And it doesn't help much that RFR is still a question mark overall. They have easily shown improvement from a couple years ago, but you get my point though. Stenhouse will no doubt have a really good season, but you can expect some decline in production.

*All stats are from DriverAverages.com

Twitter - @JeffNathans18