DFS NASCAR: Pennzoil 400 Contest Analysis

While it was a clean race on Sunday with just the two stage cautions being the only yellows we saw all race long. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t full of action though as there were 47 green flag passes for the lead, 12 lead changes, and more than 3,300 green flag passes in general in the 267-lap race. Position differential played a big role in the winning lineups since the laps led were split fairly evenly by about four drivers making the dominator points not a reliable thing to count on this week.

DraftKings

Large-Field GPP

The contest that represents the large-field GPP this week was the $40K Happy Hour with 47,562 entries and the top 11,974 finishing positions being paid. It was a multi-entry contest with the max being 20 entries per player. Heading up the ownership was none other than Kurt Busch at 45.9%, who in final practice showed better speed than he had all weekend and that coupled with his starting spot of P28 for the race made him a favorite among GPP players despite his history at the track. The second highest-owned driver was my contrarian play of the week in Ryan Newman at 42.35% because he too was starting in the back, P29, after showing good speed. Three drivers also starting in the 20s in the starting grid filled out the 30% ownership range in Martin Truex Jr. (38.55%), Aric Almirola (34.5%), and Chris Buescher (33.1%) because they had all either shown good race trim practice speed or had a great history at this length of track previously. The two favorites heading into the race on Sunday were played on nearly identical amounts of lineups at 27.25% and 27.24% in Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski simply because they had been two of the best drivers at the track in the last several trips. The pole sitter was played nearly 23% in this contest with Kevin Harvick ultimately posting a healthy 85 points for whoever chose to roster him. A couple of my favorite plays of the week in Austin Dillon and Daniel Suarez were rostered under 20% of the time which wound up making sense given they combined for just 50 points on the day when all was said and done. The eventual race winner, Joey Logano, was played on 16.2% of lineups while returning 92.5 points for those that played the 22-car. The best value play of the week for the driver that gave the highest score on the smallest percentage of lineups was Ricky Stenhouse Jr. with his 44.75 points appearing on 9.4% of rosters in the $40K Happy Hour contest.

Large-Field Cash

A single-entry $5 double-up with 1,379 entrants is the basis for the large-field cash breakdown. The top-600 were paid twice their entry fees. With it being a large-field cash game, all 38 drivers were played just like in the GPP above but the percentages were vastly different. This time there were five drivers that broke the 50% barrier including one over 65% and nearly two more over 60%. Kurt Busch once more led the way at 67.66% with Martin Truex Jr. coming in second at 59.25% and Ryan Newman in third at 59.03% in this one. All three started nearly the same place so banking on position differential was the name of the game with these ownerships. Aric Almirola and Chris Buescher were the two other drivers over 50% at 51.9% and 51.3% respectively. Combined they covered five of the 10 starting spots in the 20s on Sunday in the grid. Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch were separated by more than 20 percentage points in this contest with Keselowski at 41.5% and Busch at 20% which makes sense since Keselowski was starting 16 spots further back than Busch was and both had fast cars. The pole sitter was rostered on 17.9% of lineups which is still a tad high for a cash lineup on a 1.5-mile track but it did pay dividends for them. The two fastest cars all weekend in Austin Dillon and Daniel Hemric, who were both mid-tier priced on DK and starting P4 and P5, were played on 9.8% and 7.6% of lineups in this contest which is a bit surprising. This time the best value play in the contest was Joey Logano and his 92.5 points on just 6.4% of lineups.

Optimal Lineup

The DraftKings optimal lineup this week was lower than last week’s but that’s the nature of a race like we had on Sunday. It was played by one person in the large-field GPP contest we broke down but the winning lineup in the cash contest was only at 324. The three highest-priced drivers on the site weren’t in the lineup since there was better value down the salary list but three of the five drivers that scored better than 60 DK points are in this lineup. The drivers in the lineup combined for just under a 7X value day on Sunday coming in at 6.96 for the lineup as a whole. You will notice that there are two budget-friendly plays on the roster in William Byron and Chris Buescher but both put up values of better than 5.3 on Sunday and generally that’s the baseline value we’re looking for in order to hit the money.

FanDuel

Large-Field GPP

The $5K Go-Kart with 23,952 entries, which was a multi-entry contest, will serve as the basis for the large-field GPP on FD. The top 5,500 spots were paid. Kurt Busch once more led the way as he was owned in 39% of lineups to capitalize on potential position differential upside, which he did. Three other drivers cracked the 30-percent barrier with Kyle Busch leading the pack a 32.2% followed by Martin Truex Jr. at 31.2% and lastly Brad Keselowski at 30.3%. Aric Almirola just missed coming in at 29.9 percent. Erik Jones and Ryan Newman were both similarly owned at 23.7% and 22.9% respectively with Jones returning better value at 6.3X compared to Newman’s 5.5x ROI. The pole sitter, Kevin Harvick, came in just over a quarter of rosters playing him while the winner, Joey Logano, was on just over a fifth of rosters in this contest. Austin Dillon and his 39.8 points were on 18 percent of lineups while the favorite cheap play in Chris Buescher was on 15.6% of rosters with his 54.2 points. Kyle Larson was a sneaky play this week if his long-run practice speed showed up and for the most part it did until a pit road penalty trapped him further back in the field. But he was still played on 13.4% of GPP lineups even at this elevated salary on FanDuel. Paul Menard was perhaps the best value on the slate with his 52.7 points being rostered on just 10.9 percent of the lineups.

Small-Field Cash

A two dollar double-up with 112 entries is what is being broken down for the small-field cash. It was a single-entry double-up and the top-50 positions doubled their entry fee. For the first time we have a different ownership leader. Martin Truex Jr. was played on 60.7% of lineups in this one while the previous ownership leader, Kurt Busch, was played 58% of the time. Three drivers came in over the 40 percent threshold with Aric Almirola unsurprisingly leading that group at 46.4 percent with Ryan Newman following at 45.5% and Brad Keselowski bringing up the rear of the group at 43.8 percent. Both Daniel Suarez and Chris Buescher were played on exactly 29.5 percent of rosters despite there being a couple thousand-dollar price gap between them. A surprising  addition to a cash lineup was Matt DiBenedetto but 3.6% of rosters did just that for his 49.1 points on Sunday. The most played rookie in the contest was Ryan Preece at 20.5 percent and his $5,000 salary brought an 8.2x value in his 42 points scored on the day. More fitting with it being a cash game was Kevin Harvick’s ownership at 12.5%, it also didn’t help that his salary was so high already in the young season. The hometown favorite in Kyle Busch was played on 24.1 percent of lineups which does fit a cash lineup strategy since he was thought to be the laps led dominator coming into the race. Unquestionably the best value in this contest came from Joey Logano being played just 7.1% of the time for his 82.8 points.

Optimal Lineup

The FanDuel optimal left $500 on the table this week but still produced a hefty 349.4 points working out to slightly better than a 7x value across the five-driver roster. There are differences between the DK and FD lineups as Joey Logano and Kurt Busch and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. are the only holdovers on both. Aric Almirola and Erik Jones fill out the rest of the roster as their position differential points come in handy. This lineup was played eight times in the Intimidator and once in the large-field GPP contest that was broken down earlier.