2018 NASCAR DFS Payline Analysis: Daytona 500

The first race of the season is in the books and man was it a nail bitter. A last lap block turned out to be the difference as Aric Almirola tried to stop Austin Dillon from making a run and spun out in front of the field to wind up finishing 10^th instead. In this article we will break down some of the contests on Draft Kings to see how they played out, where the money line was, and who was owned the most in those contests.

$25K Hot Rod (3 Entry Max)

Entry fee- $3 

Total Prizes - $25,000  First Place - $3,000

Entrants – 9,908  Places paid – 2,420

Top Score – 330.25  Money line – 206.25  Fantasy Alarm lineups – 147.75 GPP 1, 130.25 GPP 2

As expected Brad Keselowski was the highest owned driver in the field, being played on 52.78% of rosters. It was hard to turn down his starting spot and upside but those that played him only got 12 points for their money spent and in fact only two of the top-20 finishers had Keselowski on their roster. Kyle Larson was the next highest owned driver at 47.3% and his 47 points helped power nine of the top-20 spots to their cashes. The near winner, Aric Almirola was the most popular mid-tier driver played on Sunday with him appearing on just a tick over 40% of lineups in this contest. Those who rostered him got nice return for their choice with 62.25 points including the late-race crash. The driver who wind up winning the race, Austin Dillon, was played on just over 7.5% of lineups, mainly due to his P14 qualifying spot but starting in the back of the field. The small ownership rate was a windfall for those that rostered him as he got 64.75 points. The two biggest bargain producers of the race were David Gilliland (56.5 points) and Justin Marks (50.75 points) at $5,100 and $4,800 respectively. Gilliland was on nearly 16% of rosters but Marks made less than 1% of lineups meaning about 950 individual lineups played the flyer.

$2K Horsepower (7 Entry Max)

Entry Fee- $9

Total Prizes - $2,000  First place - $200

Entrants – 261  Places paid – 64

Top Score – 289.75  Money Line – 211.25  Fantasy Alarm Lineups – 147.75 GPP 1, 130.25 GPP 2

The smaller field GPP some differences in ownership rates with four drivers at more than 50% owned compared to just one in the bigger field GPP above. Brad Keselowski again led the way at 67.4% owned and was on 19 of the top 25 scoring lineups with Kyle Larson not far behind at 62% owned. Jimmie Johnson was again the third-highest owned driver but his percentage rose from 41.7% in the big GPP to 53.6% in this one, though surprisingly 25 of the 64 lineups that cashed had his 3.5 points on them. Aric Almirola was again the fourth-highest owned and rounds out the 50% and above club. The most owned inexpensive drivers were Matt DiBenedetto at 30.65% and David Gilliland at 26% who both did well for their price tags coming in, though Gilliland’s 56-point race doubles DiBenedetto’s 28-point showing. If you rostered Chris Buescher, Austin Dillon, and Justin Marks all on one lineup they would have given you a big leg up on the competition. The three combined for 172.5 points for $18,800 in combined salary and all were owned on less than 3.5% of lineups. Denny Hamlin, one of the favorites heading into the race, was owned in just 11.11% lineups which is a little surprising given his stats in recent 500s.

Single Entry $5 Double-Up

Entry Fee - $5  1^st-500^th places paid - $10

Total Entrants – 1149

Top Score – 289.25  Money Line – 186.25  Fantasy Alarm Lineup – 179.75

Once again the top four drivers remained Brad Keselowski, Kyle Larson, Jimmie Johnson, and Aric Almirola in the same order, but this time they were all on at least 60% of lineups, save for Almirola at 59.6%. Interestingly though, Austin Dillon was owned on 6.8% of lineups, nearly the same amount as the big field GPP. His starting with negative 20+ points in positional differential is an unusual choice for a cash lineup, that wound up working in their favor with the 64.75 points from him. William Byron hit a high in ownership rate in this contest at 41.95% as compared to the two GPPs. His 33.5 points weren’t bad production giving him a value (FPPK) of 4.6 for the race, but for $300 less, Paul Menard carried an 11.31% ownership rate and scored 53.75 points for a value of 7.67. The highest scoring driver of the week, Ryan Blaney with 65 points, was on just 13.4% of lineups in this contest which, was actually the lowest rate of the three contests (17.86 in $25K and 14.56 in $2K). The combo of Chris Buescher and Justin Marks were both owned on 1.5% of lineups or less and even with Dillon on nearly 7% of lineups, it was still a very good half a lineup with lower ownership.

Optimal Lineup for the Daytona 500

Everyone wants to know what the best lineup they could’ve entered regardless of contest was. Well guess what? I will have that for you each week.

The best six-driver roster you could have put together for the Daytona 500 is as follows:

As you can see the best lineup left $7,600 on the table but scored a whopping 359.25 points and had six of the eight 50+-point drivers for this week. Several of the drivers mentioned in the analysis above are in the lineup and for the most part they were drivers that started worse than 20^th and moved up as the race went on. It is uncommon, generally, to have that many 50+ point scores in one race but restrictor plates can produce that with all of the crashes allowing drivers to gain massive points in the PD category.