I’m getting an early head start on the Xfinity Playbook this week. I’m starting the research early Monday morning (around 2:30 am ET since I suffer from a mild sleeping disorder) because I didn’t have the best week with Daytona’s Road Course and I only have to focus on Xfinity since the Trucks are off. Miami is a track that is pretty unique for a 1.5-mile track since it’s not a tri-oval that we see NASCAR run so often. Rather, it’s your standard oval. It’s also pretty wide and there are plenty of grooves/lanes for drivers to run. Those feeling brave can run the higher line along the wall to generate more speed coming out of the turns. Tyler Reddick and Kyle Larson are especially good at this. It’s hard to really draw comparisons for Miami, but you can look at Darlington as a similar race track although the size and overall shape differ, but this track is known for wearing on tires so pit strategy comes into play.

We are due for 167 laps from the Xfinity drivers on Saturday and the stages have typically been broken into 40-40-87 segments and we will not have a competition caution during the first stage. That leaves us with 116.9 dominator points on the table, so we have a completely different approach from last week. Typically at Homestead, we don’t see many guys gain excessive PD. That’s not to say that it can’t happen since A.J. Allmendinger started 38th and finished fourth last year, but your highest DFS scorers are likely to come from inside the Top 15 starters. A lot of times, drivers starting on the front row tend to get out early and lead the most laps. In 2019, Tyler Reddick and Cole Custer started on the front row and lead 99 laps. In 2017 and 2018, Custer started on the front row and led a combined 277 laps between those two races by himself. In the first race at Miami last year the front row led 85 laps. The second race was an outlier because the starting order was determined by the end results of the first race so the drivers on the front row for that race only led one lap. But you get the idea, the clean air is wildly beneficial to whoever is out front.

So with this in mind, you can build your lineups are two dominators. We’ll likely see one or two drivers lead a good portion of the laps with two-to-three other drivers splitting the rest of the pot. Filling in the rest of the spots with some PD plays will be crucial as well. I’ve had a “meh” start to the season and don’t like how the starting spots and pricing shaped up. I’m probably just playing the Happy Hour contest on Saturday to save some bankroll for Sunday’s action.

Driver Pool

Tyler Reddick ($11,700; Starting P38) – Reddick will be chalk all weekend long. As referenced above, Reddick’s led plenty of laps at Miami at the Xfinity level and won his last two races at Miami before making the jump to the Cup level. In his Cup debut at Miami a year ago he started P24 and finished fourth, in a mildly entertaining finish as he seemed to think the race was over a lap early, but he kicked it back into gear to finish in the top five. He’s going to be a popular play for both races running the high line starting further back, but be a little aware of the equipment. It’s a RSS Racing car, but it sounds like it was prepped by Our Motorsports. Personally, I like Reddick more for this Xfinity race than for the Cup race, but the price tag is tough to swallow. The composite cars at Xfinity are more forgiving of getting into the wall than the Cup cars so he should be able to move up even if he swipes the wall a bit. He needs to definitely finish in the top ten with dominator points on his side to return value and the Xfinity race will not have a competition caution, so the lack of a restart doesn’t hurt him, but might suppress the early PD he could get.

Noah Gragson ($11,300; Starting P23) – I’m hoping that DFS players swear him off after he struggled to get his car fired up on Saturday, but I highly doubt that. Gragson is one of my two favorite plays today. Despite falling three laps down early last week, he clawed his way back to the lead lap and got up to 13th before wrecking out in the final laps of Saturday’s road course race. Needless to say, he’s a little pissed off and wants to right this ship. Gragson was in contention for so many races a year ago and he’s had back-to-back finishes outside the top 25 to start 2021. That’s not sitting well with him. So like Allmendinger, he probably offers position differential this week and in three races at Miami his worst finish is fifth. In last year’s double-header he led a combined 164 laps between both races. Now he likely won’t get to the front on Saturday’s race until stage two or three so the dominator points won’t be readily available, but he’s in play for PD and could contend late in the race.

A.J. Allmendinger ($11,000; Starting P24) – Last week was not what we were expecting from Allmendinger as he made a poor decision to try and block Cindric at the end of stage one. The decision ended his day and Riley Herbst’s, who was an unfortunate bystander just trying not to destroy Dinger. Both got into the grass and went to the garages early. Allmendinger will likely be starting pretty far back. He started 38th last year and finished fourth so if he’s offering up PD at a track that’s hard to pass at, people will pay up.

Ty Dillon ($10,500; Starting P13) – He’s back in the Star Car, the same one Ty Gibbs drove to victory lane last weekend. Dillon’s a Cup-level driver running with the Xfinity drivers on a great team. This is a fantastic opportunity for him and I’m not looking so much at his Cup numbers because the equipment with Germain Racing wasn’t at the level of what JGR can offer him at the Xfinity level. Assuming he doesn’t win he will need dominator points to return value. So, given the lack of a ton of PD, I’d say there’s a reasonable chance he isn’t heavily owned Saturday afternoon.

Austin Cindric ($10,200; Starting P2) – He has four races at Homestead under his belt and he’s never finished a stage outside the top ten. Plus, he’s also led 124 laps in his last three races here. He’s arguably the best driver at the Xfinity level at the moment and will likely be in every Playbook going forward. Given the ownership points and the fact he’s finished first and second through two races, we can assume he’ll be starting at the front and he could easily collect dominator points, and a good amount of them.

Harrison Burton ($9,600; Starting P3) – Burton started on the pole in the first of two races at Miami last year and pulled out a win. He only led two laps, but he led the laps that matter as last year’s race had a two-lap overtime finish. It was a pretty exciting three-way battle for the win between Cindric, Gragson, and Burton. You can watch it here, if you'd like. Burton had a solid two-week stretch at Daytona, which saw him finish third opening weekend and sixth last week on the road course. He’ll be starting relatively high so he could be one of those drivers we look at for dominator points. He’s my next-favorite play in GPP’s next to Gragson.

Brandon Jones ($9,300; Starting P4) – He’s a frustrating driver to say the least. Call it bad luck, call it a lack of talent, but he started 39th last week, got into a pretty rough wreck on pit road, and still piloted his car to a fourth place finish last week. He’s also had decent success at Miami with an average finish of 9.17 in six races and he’s never finished worse than 15th here. He has four straight finishes in the top eight and in the second race at Miami in 2020, he was the runner-up to Chase Briscoe after having an average running position of fourth and sixth for both races. What will kill Jones is the starting spot. That might actually drive ownership down so he’s strictly a contrarian GPP play that you hope can get to the front for a decent amount of laps and finish well, but we need to be reminded of how careless he can be at times.

Riley Herbst ($8,700; Starting P29) – This was a guy I was pretty heavy on in last week’s race. He was starting middle-of-the-pack, had low ownership, had gotten himself into a good position at the end of stage one and then put his car in the grass to avoid killing Allmendinger. It’s been a rough start for Herbst and like Dinger and Gragson he’ll likely offer some position differential. I think he’s a better driver than some folks in the DFS community give him credit for and he may come at lower ownership than Dinger and Gragson. He started sixth in both Miami races a year ago and finished ninth and tenth so he went backwards a touch. I’m looking at him as a decent source of PD in one of the better rides in this series.

Michael Annett ($8,500; Starting P18) – What is there to say about Michael Annett that hasn’t already been said? He’s steady Eddie out there, man. He wasn’t great by any means at DRC, but he started 33rd and finished 15th. We’ll take it. In 11 races at Miami he has an average start of 23.2 and an average finish of 16.55. Prior to the second Miami race last year he had rattled off six straight races here gaining at least five spots. He’s moved up double-digit spots on multiple occasions here and hasn’t wrecked in his last ten races. He has an average finish of 10.6 in his last five races here as well. Annett will never be a sexy pick, but if he’s offering PD and we think we can get a top ten finish out of him, then he’ll be in my driver pool.

Myatt Snider ($8,300; Starting P10) – Myatt Snider is a pretty intriguing GPP driver for me this week. The equipment is solid as he piloted the number-two car for RCR to a P7 at Daytona and then a P13 at DRC. He started 26th in the first race at Miami in 2020 and finished 15th. Then he started on the pole for the second race, and while he only led one lap he still finished seventh and that was in worse equipment than he’s currently running in. He also finished tenth at Darlington and had a couple top 20 finishes at Dover as well. He’s not viable in cash, but I’ll sprinkle him in a few GPP lineups.

Tommy Joe Martins ($5,900; Starting P27) It’s simple. Way. Too. Cheap. And I get it, he has back-to-back P24 finishes to start the year, but nobody ever considers Tommy Joe a cash game lock. He’s the definitive GPP play. A good driver that’s just in underwhelming equipment that also gets struck with bad luck. If anything, TJM probably wishes most races he ran were ten laps shorter. He easily hits 5X value with a top 20 finish.

Colby Howard ($4,900; Starting P28) The sad thing is that when we get to this bottom tier of drivers, we’re looking at guys who looked decent at last year’s double-header. Howard fits that mold. He started outside the top 30 in one race, finishing 17th. And then in the second race he started and finished 17th. And on Saturday he’ll be starting P28. He can sniff 5X value if he simply moves up five spots and finishes 23rd. And he can do that as long as doesn’t take the car behind the wall. This is a cheap punt with PD upside.

Joe Graf Jr. ($4,600; Starting P16) So his only experience at this track came in last year’s double-header. In the first race he started 32nd and finished 16th. In the second race he started 16th and finished 13th. Kinda makes you wonder what may have happened if he had finished 15th in the first race because he would’ve started on the pole for the second race. I’m not saying he would’ve won, but I like Graf as an underdog and it would’ve been nice to potentially see him get a top ten. Regardless, the circumstances are the same with no practice, but the track conditions will be slightly cooler. He can actually lose two spots and still hit 5X value, but let’s hope he holds it for our sake.

Other Drivers To Consider: As you can see, the list of drivers above isn’t as deep as it normally is, especially in the mid-range. You can look at Allgaier if you want as another pricey driver. Historically, this isn’t his track. In a dozen races here he has just two finishes inside the top ten and a top ten finish doesn’t guarantee 5X value for him. Ryan Sieg is always in play. He’s better than the results he gave at both Daytona races and the price could turn off most owners. The $6K-$7K range is tough to read if I’m being honest. A lot of the names are priced up a bit too much given their starting position. Ryan Vargas is kind of interesting starting P35 especially following the disappointing run of the Alvin Kamara mobile. But he needs to finish about 22nd, which he can do and hopefully he’s motivated to do so. I like Josh Williams as well since Homestead is one of his better tracks, but he’s starting P15 at $6,700. Not quite ideal, but I’ll mix him in. I would love to play Brandon Brown after his phenomenal start to the year, but in last year’s Miami double-header he started in the top five for both races and finished 14th and 36th (due to overheating). So these lower-mid-range plays truly are the devil’s anus on Saturday. I really wanted to include Santino Ferrucci, but it sounds like he just wants to keep the Sam Hunt Racing car in one piece. His exact words were “I don’t even have my firesuit yet. It’s kind of a funny process, but we don’t have too many expectations for Homestead… You just want the car to come back in one piece… There’s no sense in throwing away your first race trying to do something spectacular…” His words, not mine. For other cheap drivers you could look at Bayley Currey or JJ Yeley, but I’d rather just pay down to the featured bunch.

I'm adding JJ Yeley to a few of my lineups just because I don't want to build around TJM, Howard, and Graf for all my builds. Yeley could be a safer play given that he's starting P39 and should move up enough spots to come close to 5X value. Even if he falls short, you can still hit value if you pair him with the right dominators.

Core Drivers

Top Tier

Mid Range

Value

AJ Allmendinger

Harrison Burton

JJ Yeley

Noah Gragson

Riley Herbst

Tommy Joe Martins (GPP)

Austin Cindric

 

Colby Howard