NASCAR DFS Go Bowling At The Glen Playbook: Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman Looking For Win

Road racing is back again this week at Watkins Glen. The Go Bowling at The Glen is set for Sunday afternoon as the penultimate race in the NASCAR Cup Series regular season. There’s still a ton to be decided as well. After Michael McDowell’s win at the Indy Road course last week, the playoff bubble tightened with it now being a fight between three drivers in Bubba Wallace, Daniel Suarez, and Ty Gibbs the main contenders. We’re in a fight for the last playoff spots and that will play out for DFS too. How are we approaching Watkins Glen for DFS strategy? Who are the top NASCAR DFS plays for the Go Bowling at The Glen on Sunday? What are we expecting for on-track racing? Is there anything we can take from last week at Indy Road course? What are the practice and qualifying results for Watkins Glen? All of that is analyzed in this week’s NASCAR DFS Playbook for the Go Bowling At The Glen.

Watkins Glen Track Layout and Race History

The 2.45-mile layout of the famed Watkins Glen International is one of speed. It’s perhaps the fastest road course on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule with laps being turned in the 70-73 second range during the race. While there are technically 11 corners on the track, a few of them come from the Bus Stop chicane which could be why some sources list eight corners as a the total. In the past several races, the winner has started P6 or better and in fact, if we go back all the way to 2010, only one driver has won starting outside the top-six. So track position is key here. That’s mainly because it’s also one of the more caution-free tracks on the schedule, at least for the Cup Series unlike the Xfinity races. So like we saw last week at Indy Road, we could be in for another race of a very long Green Flag stretches with 90 scheduled laps on Sunday.

NASCAR DFS Strategy For Go Bowling At The Glen

Unlike last week where we built mainly for chaos and didn’t get it, we’re building mainly for straightforward forward clean racing. This is a much more gentle circuit on cars and drivers and there are far less places to have issues that would bring out a yellow at Watkins Glen which means we typically get less of them. Take out the cautions for stage breaks from the last handful of races here and there’s an average of just two natural cautions a race. So how do we build for DFS with that knowledge? We’re not as interested in position differential as we are in finish position and win equity. Like we stated on the podcast, for road courses we’re looking for at least 40 points a driver on DraftKings and north of that on FanDuel given the laps completed points we get. While PD can help get us there, it’s tougher to pass here than most other road courses. Why? Couple the faster speed here and less technical elements and the long Green Flag runs and you get a lot of cars spread out quite a bit making passing tough. In the last three races here (2019, 2021, 2022) an average of three drivers to start outside the top-15 finished inside the top-10 per race. That’s not that many. This weekend the mid-tier and value drivers are going to make or break your builds because of all of the popular high-priced drivers filling the tops of roster builds. Getting different isn’t a bad thing here but make sure you have a view of how the race will play out and what’s needed for your mid-tier or value-tier drivers to score the points you want/need.

DraftKings Scoring History At Watkins Glen

The following chart shows the average DraftKings points scored by starting spot over the last five Watkins Glen races. It’s simply based on starting spot regardless of the drivers in those spots or the cars or manufacturers. It’s to show the strategy at play at Watkins Glen and how races typically play out for DFS.

FanDuel Scoring History At Watkins Glen

The following chart shows the average FanDuel points scored by starting spot over the last five Watkins Glen races. It’s simply based on starting spot regardless of the drivers in those spots or the cars or manufacturers. It’s to show the strategy at play at Watkins Glen and how races typically play out for DFS.

Practice And Qualifying Results For Go Bowling At The Glen

The following table shows the qualifying and practice results for the Go Bowling At The Glen. It shows drivers' practice results for single-lap speed as well as lap averages. It’s designed to give you an idea of who may have PD or who may be able to hold on to their starting spot better than others.

Stacks

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