Optimal: Stenhouse Jr., Busch, Blaney, Dillon, Gragson, Hemric, Herbst, Alfredo, Ragan, Gilliland, Berry, Lajoie, Allmendinger, Truex Jr.
GPP: Drivers starting in spots 16-25
Super GPP: Jones, Gibbs, Suarez
NASCAR season is back, and we are excited to provide weekly Cup Series breakdowns to help you build your Sunday lineups! We’ve also got projections for Trucks and Xfinity in addition to the Cup Series. We start out with the biggest race of them all, the Daytona 500. The weather is not looking good for Sunday, but we will race at some point, whether it’s Sunday night or Monday evening. Let’s dive into the strategy for this race.
If you are new to NASCAR DFS, listen up. Daytona (along with Talladega and New-Atlanta), are considered Super-Speedways, or drafting tracks. In these races, anyone is capable of a good finish, and we often see big crashes that knock a lot of drivers out of the race. For this reason, the strategy for these races is to stack the back. For cash and SE contests, we suggest not playing anyone starting in the top 20. As you move into large field MME tournaments, feel free to include 1-2 drivers starting in the 10-19 range, but it is not a must. Every driver has about a 60% chance of finishing the race, so playing guys that start towards the front comes with a huge risk of a negative score in your lineup. Also, do not be afraid to leave salary on the table. More likely than not, the optimal lineup will have an excess of salary leftover.
So who are the top drivers starting in the back? Well, anyone starting in the rear of the field is viable, but the most optimal drivers include Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Kyle Busch, Ryan Blaney, and Austin Dillon. These four drivers will be very highly owned, as they have a great chance to finish near the front, and put up a huge score if they miss the wrecks. While these four are great plays, and you will probably want at least 1 or 2 of them in your lineups, you should be able to get lower ownership on some other optimal guys starting even further back. They have just as good of a chance to finish near the front, even though their names aren’t as big. These guys include Noah Gragson, Daniel Hemric, Riley Herbst, Anthony Alfredo, and David Ragan. Other great plays that will still garner some ownership, but maybe slightly less than everyone mentioned so far, are Todd Gilliland, Josh Berry, Corey Lajoie, and AJ Allmendinger. One driver who breaks the mold in this range is Martin Truex Jr. He is an enigma because he is a popular driver in great equipment starting 27th, however he has the reputation of being a bad Super-Speedway driver and has never won on this track type. He did win the first two stages of the 500 last year before being caught up in a late wreck. We think he is definitely worth a flier as we almost saw him break throughlast year.
This year’s Daytona 500 is super unique for DFS, mainly because the qualifying Duels were full of chaos, which has resulted in a great amount of good drivers starting towards the back. You will want to find a way to get lower ownership in your lineup while still playing guys with huge upside in place differential. Blaney, Stenhouse, and Busch rank very high in average running position, and are the most talented drivers starting towards the back on Super Speedways, but in reality, every driver has a very similar chance of wrecking out of the race. It really does come down to having good luck on these tracks. For this reason, in GPPs, we recommend using the projections and trying to use the drivers starting in the back with lower projected ownership. For example, if Ryan Blaney is projecting for 50% ownership, but Daniel Hemric is projecting for just 20% ownership. I would much rather be overweight on Hemric, and underweight on Blaney. All guys mentioned are phenomenal plays, but we just wanted to emphasize the importance of thinking about your total ownership in GPPs.
Another way to make your lineups more unique is to include a guy starting inside the top 25 that is not expected to see much ownership. Guys in that range that stand out include Ryan Preece, Bubba Wallace, Ross Chastain, Brad Keselowski, Chase Briscoe, Chris Buescher, and William Byron. All of these guys have a good history of a solid average running position at Super Speedways, and can be in contention for the win if they avoid the carnage. These guys are also very aggressive for the most part, which can be scary to watch at Daytona, but that is something we want in GPPs.
Another tidbit to mention is that the Toyotas have looked to be the dominant car in the draft throughout the week. They introduced a new nose to the car this year, and it is making its debut this week. The cars were slow in single car qualifying, but once they were all on the track together, they were mad fast after they formed a drafting line. This is likely because of the new nose, which was made for these tracks. We saw a Toyota win both duels, and we would not be shocked to see one win on Sunday.
Unfortunately, most Toyota drivers are starting towards the front, so we do not have interest in all of them, but Martin Truex Jr., Bubba Wallace, and Jimmie Johnson are in Toyotas and start far enough back for us to like them in this race. Wallace is gaining some steam already, but he is a great play in GPPs and one of my (Josh) top picks to win the race.
You may have noticed this writeup didn’t include some of the biggest names in the sport such as Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano and Chase Elliott. This is because they are all starting inside the top 10. No matter how skilled a driver is, a great amount of luck comes into effect for this race, so drivers starting this high will absolutely kill your lineups if you pick them and they wreck out early. In cash contests they should be 0% owned. However, if you must use one in a GPP the best pick would be Hamlin. As mentioned before the Toyotas look great this weekend and he is a bonafide stud on drafting tracks. Just be warned this is super risky!!!
The last few fliers we don’t mind are Erik Jones, Ty Gibbs and Daniel Suarez in that order. These guys have just enough PD upside and low enough ownership they could be worth a shot in GPPs to differentiate your lineups. Jones in particular has a stellar history in this track type and is now back in a Toyota which we love this week.