June 16, 2024

Ryan Blaney will start on the front row in Sunday's Iowa Corn 350 at Iowa Speedway. Despite Sunday being the inaugural Cup race at the renowned short track, it is not the first time NASCAR has run a featured event here. Between 2009 and 2019, Iowa was a regular stop on both the Xfinity and Truck schedule, a timeframe over which the track hosted a total of 33 NASCAR-sanctioned races. In two of these races, a young up-and-coming driver from the Midwest entered victory lane in America's Heartland, victories that proved he was a star on the rise in the sport of motor racing. That driver was, of course, Ryan Blaney, who won the Truck Series race in September 2012 and the Xfinity race in August 2015. While a lot has changed since he last won at this venue, the fact that he has multiple victories here makes him a driver that must be considered heading into the weekend. Interestingly, in both of these races, the second-generation driver started from P2, the same position he will start from Sunday night. Given that he is a driver who is averaging 47.13 DraftKings points in the Next Gen car on short tracks (eighth-best among full-time drivers) and that he has experience on this track, Ryan Blaney looks like a tremendous pivot play off of fellow pole-sitter Kyle Larson and is a driver you will want to have plenty of exposure to in DFS this weekend. --Adam Erhardt - RotoBaller
Source: Racing-Reference.info