Everyone loves playing the DraftKings and FanDuel contests and getting that instant gratification of that cold, hard, cash. Rest assured we will go full in on DraftKings and FanDuel contests, but sometimes it’s fun to dip our toes in other contests as well. To spice things up this season, I am inviting all of us to have some fun in a different arena in two different contests, one of which is free and for competitive fun.
First off, both contests can be played on fantasyracingonline.net, and to be sure there are more than just these two contests being offered, they are just the ones I am highlighting. Secondly one is a season-long salary cap contest in which you are competing in one big group of players and you don’t really change your lineup from week-to-week, the second contest is a free weekly salary cap contest in which FA Nation will be in one private group and competing for bragging rights during the season.
Everyone loves free things, so let’s start it off that way.
Slingshot Fantasy Auto
The basic premise of the contest is a weekly salary-cap contest in which rosters are made up of five drivers staying under a salary cap of $50,000, similar to the parameters of FanDuel. However, that’s about the only similarity as the points system is completely different. Points are given for finishing spots, stage finishes, laps led, and place differential but then there are bonuses for most laps led and race wins. The scoring can get quite astronomical in a hurry with +/-2 points per position for position differential, +1 point per lap led, +10 points for most laps led, +20 points for race win, 100 points for first down to two points for 40th, and then stage points like in the actual race.
Each week the salaries will be posted like they are on FanDuel or DraftKings and you can rework your lineups as many times as you want to before the rosters lock at green flag time, unless the race is delayed a day and then rosters are opened again until the official green flag.
Only the 36 points races during the season will be played in this contest, a.k.a. the Clash and the All-Star festivities are not playable for a couple of built in off-weeks in addition to the three in the season’s schedule already.
As I referenced before, I have setup a private league in the contest for our readers to compete against me each week for the fun of it and bragging rights. In order to join the private league, when you signup for the contest, it will ask you if you are creating or joining a public league or joining a private league, you want to click join private league and then input the league name and the password.
League Name: Fantasy Alarm
Password: FANation2019
Please enter here by the Daytona 500 for a full season worth of points fun.
If you have any problems, reach out in the FA Chat in either NASCAR or a private message.
Salary Cap Challenge
Right up front I want to let you know this one isn’t free, it’s $30 for the full season of this contest and that money goes into one big pool of money for payouts. There are weekly prizes for this one as well as having a big payout to the top-25 scoring rosters a season’s end.
This is not a weekly change of roster type contest, it is a one roster for the full season type contest. Starting before the Daytona 500 each roster is filled with eight total drivers and those drivers have to stay under a salary cap of fictional $1,500 with the salaries set before the season starts and are out right now. Seven of the drivers on the roster are normal points getters, with the eighth driver being an All-Star driver getting you twice the point totals but also costing twice as much. You can make three driver trades throughout the first half of the season, then none after the 19th race of the year, and switching which driver is your All-Star vs. regular counts as a move. So there is a strategy here to picking guys that aren’t specialists but instead are guys that are solid at all kinds of tracks.
The scoring in this contest is close to the one above, though different in bonuses and some categories. There is no position differential in this league, but there are bonuses for winning from the pole and being the pole sitter. First place gets 80 points and 40th gets two with the same stage finishes and laps led, and most laps led bonus and race win bonus. The other change to this contest is that you are technically drafting car numbers and not drivers, so if there is a different driver in that car one race you get the points for the car and not the driver which can have both pros and cons.
Like I mentioned earlier there are weekly prizes. The highest scoring roster each week wins $25 for each of the 36 points races during the season and the top-25 overall scoring rosters win decreasing percentages of the remaining pot for the end of the year, last year first prize was $1,000 (though that’s not guaranteed to be the case this year). You can also enter more than once into this contest, though it costs $30 each time.
This contest can be found here. If you have any questions, reach out to me on twitter or the FA chat.
It should be fun to try these different contests out for the 2019 season and put different skills to the test.