Hello everyone and welcome to the 1st installment of the Empire’s “NASCAR PitStop” for the 2014 NASCAR season. This season is the perfect time to embrace a sport that has so much to offer to sports fans and how Fantasy NASCAR compares to no other!

The growing changes and the evolution of the major sports are happening right before our eyes including with NASCAR. The 2014 NASCAR off-season rule changes have made the race season and each race more important than ever, with a single win meaning more than in the past. Do you like tourney time during March Madness? Do you like the new playoff system in the BCS? NASCAR knows fans love both of these and thus changed The Chase for the Cup’s format for the 2014 season. The Chase for the Cup used to be the final 12 races of the season & was between the top 10 drivers along with two wildcards in the point standings to determine champ will now be a tourney format that awards winning and finishing up front in a 3 race format during the final 12 races. The new format and tourney will all come down to the final race of the season where it could mean putting somebody into a wall to bring your racing team to glory.

Fantasy NASCAR has multiple ways to keep your years worth of deciding between rankings and searching the waiver wire late at night every Tuesday to pay off! NASCAR starts 43 drivers every race and in some leagues, they rank the drivers in classes: A, B & C. Class A consists of the Top 10 fantasy drivers from the previous year, class B will be the Top 11-25 ranked drivers with the C class being the Top 26-43 drivers along with possible sleepers. Class C is possibly the most entertaining class. It allows you to take a gamble on a wide range of drivers that will not hurt you by selecting because win probability is so low, but also provides multiple rooting interests to catch every race on Sundays! Another NASCAR league is the Weekly Pick’ Em, which allows you to match your favorite drivers versus other opponents’ favorite driver.

No matter what kind of NASCAR league you participate in, you can count on our Fantasy NASCAR Rankings getting released each week for each specific track, along with great options for Yahoo’s A, B, or C classes.

And if you want to try something new, The Empire offers one of the most simple and addictive ways to play Fantasy NASCAR! Each owner has $10,000,000 (10 million) to spend on 8 drivers in a NASCAR Salary Cap league. As an added bonus, any driver not listed can be purchased for mere $350,000. This list is as accurate as possible based on some off-season changes. Each owner HAS TO purchase 8 drivers. The owner’s team with the highest points total at the end of the season wins. You don’t even have to set your roster week after week; it’s THAT easy! Scoring updates will be provided as quickly as possible and the standings and points will be based on the information obtained via NASCAR.com.

Every Friday until the first race of the season, (Daytona 500 on Feb 23), The Empire will be bringing you the important off-season story-lines including crew changes and drivers that seemed to be a little more focused on winning in the off-season.

Interested in knowing who stands a great chance at winning the title in 2014? I have taken the time to rank the Top 15 driver odds for making the 2014 Chase for the Cup, and winning the Championship. Enjoy!

NASCAR 2014 CHAMPIONSHIP ODDS

Jimmie Johnson- 7/2 Kevin Harvick- 9/2 Matt Kenseth- 6/1 Kyle Busch- 8/1 Brad Keselowski- 10/1 Denny Hamlin- 10/1 Dale Earnhardt Jr- 10/1 Kasey Kahne- 11/1 Tony Stewart- 13/1 Jeff Gordon- 16/1 Carl Edwards- 18/1 Joey Logano- 20/1 Greg Biffle- 20/1 Kurt Busch- 20/1 Martin Treux Jr 20/1