NASCAR DFS NOCO 400 Playbook: Chase Elliott And His Mustache Are Back

Martinsville is here! Oh were you expecting “Chase is Back” as the first sentence? Close, it was in the second. The NOCO 400 on Sunday April 15 is gearing up to be another great race at the longest-tenured, shortest, track on the NASCAR schedule. Martinsville is the only track to be on the NASCAR schedule every year since the first year — 1949. In the last few years it’s been the site of some of the best races all year, whether it be the Spring race or Fall. Both have supplied equal amounts of drama and great racing. We’re looking for that again on Sunday. Now how do we attack this track for DFS? Let’s dive in to this week’s NASCAR DFS playbook and find out.

Weather For Sunday At Martinsville Speedway

Rain wreaked havoc on the schedule and Truck race on Friday. The good news though is that there is little to no chance of rain on Sunday for the Cup festivities, that is until the evening. It’s for that reason that the Cup race has been moved up roughly 15 minutes for Green Flag to 2:56 pm ET instead of 3:10 pm ET. So make sure to set the lineups a little sooner.

NASCAR DFS Strategy for Martinsville

Martinsville is a great DFS track. It might not seem like it on the surface but the facts bear it out. There are a bunch of ways to build lineups for The Paperclip across both cash and GPP contests. The fact that laps led dominators are needed can’t be ignored. That’s true. There are 400 laps in Sunday’s race and that gives ample time to rack up those dominator points. However, there are a few different places to get them, as we’ve seen from previous races. Sure, you’d think that starting on the front row guarantees that driver a bunch of laps led, and while that tends to be true; the last several races have seen dominators come from anywhere between P1 and P20 starting spots. So what are we looking for in a dominator? The most important thing is long-run speed. For that we want to look at 20- or 25-lap averages from practice. It’s very easy to see long green flag runs here and so cars that hold up over the long run are more able to stay out front for long periods of the race. What about passing here though? Isn’t tough to pass on this tight, half-mile, track? It can be, but passing does happen. Last year for example, seven of the top-nine finish spots went to drivers starting P11 or worse and five of the top-10 finishers in the Fall race did the same, including the winner. So while starting in the top-10 is usually good here, it’s not a must. Lapping in the back of the field is a concern though as dating back to 2019, the average number of lead lap finishers is 17. So basically half the field finishes at least a lap down, if not worse. So be careful hunting PD from too far back as if they get lapped, it’ll cap their finish position and PD a bit.

Practice and Qualifying Results For NOCO 400

Below is a chart comparing where drivers qualified compared to where they ran for practice speed on short and long-run speeds. It’s a way to visualize who may drop back and who may move up.

Stacks

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