Fantasy Nascar

Car racing fans, like fans of any sport, seem to enjoy fantasy racing. Fantasy sports, including Fantasy NASCAR, have become popular because they connect people with the sports they love. For those who don't know how fantasy sports work, players become team owners, acquiring real life drivers who earn them points based on real race results. Leagues have championships on a weekly, monthly, yearly, or really any length of time, all based on the real results of NASCAR races. Leagues are sometimes free and sometimes not, and pay out in cash or sometimes merchandise.

Fantasy NASCAR followed the success of Fantasy football leagues, emerging in the 80's but hitting its stride when the Internet became popular in the 90's. NASCAR fantasy is perhaps the most popular of the fantasy racing games including Prototype and Formula One. Some of the fantasy NASCAR games run the entire season, but others segment themselves based on months, quarters or other smaller time frames to encourage more new membership.

Fantasy NASCAR competitions each abide by their own unique rules Most of them, however, generally follow NASCAR rules for awarding points for wins, and for point accumulation. Leagues often apply modifiers, such as restricting the number of races that count for a fantasy team, based on the overall popularity of a given driver. Other criteria such as top lap time or average lap time, or total time in first place, become important for leagues that are based on fewer races such as only one official NASCAR series. There are fantasy NASCAR leagues that rely on people predicting certain drivers' order of finish in each race, or for certain events. Some leagues are for many types of racing, and might include NASCAR as well as open wheel or even motorcycle racing in the set of events players must predict.

A trip to the NASCAR web site will bring you to their own fantasy NASCAR league. There's a per race $100 million dollar budget for owners to use in assembling their teams. In this league owners face owners every week, with standings based on the overall won/loss record. Every week is a new challenge as contenders work against each other to find the best racers that week. This fantasy NASCAR league costs $12.95.

Driveraverages.com lists NASCAR driver averages and points for the current NASCAR season - useful information for fantasy NASCAR players. A Google search can find more tips.