DailyFanRacing Cup Strategy Preview - Auto Club
Hey everyone, Ryan Larkin here with a quick message.
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What’s up everyone! It’s Luke Altmayer (The NASCAR DFS goat) back at it again with another epic strategy breakdown article! I hope all of you had a great start to the season last weekend! If you didn’t, just know that Daytona is a tough track for DFS with all the chaos and high variance. The race this weekend at Auto Club should be more predictable and easier for us to take advantage of over the competition. In this article, I’ll break down the race info, lineup construction strategies, and pivot points we can use to finish at the top of our tournaments on Sunday. Let’s get into it!
Race Info
Auto Club is a 2 mile, low-banked oval located in Fontana, California. They only race here once per season, but there are some comparable tracks we can look at for data like Michigan, Homestead, and Darlington.
We often see tire wear play a big factor at this track because there are usually a few long green flag runs and with the high speeds and old track surface, this eats up the tires. The drivers that aren’t good at managing tires will be better on the short run, and the drivers that can manage their tires well will be great on the long run.
At Daytona, we saw most of the cars were able to stay in the draft and have a chance for the win. However, that will not be the case this weekend because the difference in equipment among the drivers will be shown on the track. The bigger teams with more money will have the faster cars while the smaller teams with less money will be at a disadvantage because they’ll have slower lap times which will add up quickly.
Qualifying for this race was canceled due to rain which means we have a very weird starting grid. I’ll talk more about this situation in the lineup construction section of this article.
This event is 200 laps with two 65 lap stages, and a 70 lap finale to the checkered flag. The race locks at 3:45 EST on DraftKings and 3:30 on FanDuel. Now, let’s talk about lineup construction!
Lineup Construction
Usually, our main focus at the intermediates is to nail the dominators while mixing in some solid place differential options. However, the place differential will be more important than usual for this race.
Because qualifying got canceled, we have lots of high quality drivers starting in the back that can gain tons of positions on the track and rack up big fantasy scores. This is because of the formula that’s used to set the starting lineup which involves a few factors.
The lineup construction will be similar to Daytona, since we’ll be targeting multiple drivers starting towards the back of the field. The only difference though is we need to target 1-2 dominators in our lineups as well. This is because a dominator has the potential to outscore the PD plays with their fast lap and laps led ability.
Looking at the last five Auto Club races, we usually see one driver lead around 100 laps and another lead about 30-40 laps. The second dominator might not be needed depending on how the place differential drivers perform. However, if the main lap leader scores a lot of dominator points and finishes well, we’ll need them in our lineups to have a chance at taking down our tournaments.
Let’s say Christopher Bell leads 100 laps, scores 50 fast laps, and wins the race on Sunday. This means he would score 93.5 fantasy points on DraftKings and would be in the winning lineup.
Let’s say Joey Logano is the second dominator and leads 25 laps, scores 10 fast laps, and finishes 2nd on Sunday. This would score him 52.75 fantasy points which is good but might not outscore some of the place differential plays.
If Byron finishes 10th on Sunday, he would score 56 fantasy points with 22 from PD (32nd to 10th) and 34 from his finishing position.
If you’re building multiple lineups like myself, we need to cover the scenarios that can happen involving the lap leaders and place differential plays. If we think a lot of the place differential drivers finish well, we’ll probably only want to target one lap leader in those lineups. However, if only a few of them finish up front, this is where having two dominators could come into play as the second lap leader would be needed in this situation.
A lot of the drivers starting up front aren’t high enough in salary which means they can score very well without dominating a significant portion of the race. There are a lot of drivers that will project strongly which means a driver hitting 5x value probably won’t be enough on this slate.
I hope this section helps give you guys a better understanding on how we’ll be constructing our lineups this weekend with the dominators and place differential plays. Now, let’s talk about some of the pivot points on this slate!
Pivot points
Chase Elliott should be one of the highest owned drivers on Sunday with his 33rd starting spot and high upside he offers. I think he’s the safest driver in the top tier with the extra place differential, but does that mean he will score the most fantasy points?
Larson, Hamlin, and Kyle Busch offer place differential as well and are more likely to dominate starting closer to the front. Elliott is a great play, but I think he will be over owned on this slate.
If Chase finishes 10th, he would score 57 fantasy points which might not be enough depending on what the drivers around him score. I’m going to have exposure to Chase, but I’ll probably be underweight in large field tournaments with the great pivots around him.
The top 5 starters on Sunday are Christopher Bell, Ricky Stenhouse Jr, Joey Logano, Alex Bowman, and Chris Buescher. Bell will be the highest owned of these guys, since he’s the pole sitter even though there was no practice or qualifying.
I’m not saying Bell is a bad play but what happens if Logano or Bowman passes him early in the race? Assuming Bell doesn’t get back to the lead, he won’t score enough, and you’ll already have leverage on the field with your lower owned dominator play.
The drivers starting in the back will all project well, but we can’t ignore some of the strong plays starting mid pack. Drivers like Truex and Wallace will carry less ownership because most DFS players will target Reddick or Byron with them starting deep.
I’m not saying we should fade all of the drivers starting in the back, but our lineups should have a mix of some of the higher owned plays with a few pivot plays in GPPs.
A lot of the value drivers are starting deep but again, ownership will be higher on the ones starting a little further back. Justin Haley starts 29th and will be higher owned than Ty Gibbs starting 23rd and Noah Gragson starting 20th. Again, Haley is not a bad play, but there are definitely some pivots around him if the rest of your lineup is chalky.
This slate is going to be about nailing which of the place differential plays score the best with the right dominator or dominators and having the lower owned pivot that gets you to the top of the leaderboard.
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Alright, that’ll do it here for me. I’m hoping this article helps you guys from a tournament perspective on how to attack the slate and wish you all the best of luck on Sunday! Feel free to ask me any questions in the Discord, and let’s keep the momentum going! You can follow me on Twitter @DFS_NASCAR_Zone! Good luck everyone!