DailyFanRacing Cup Strategy Preview - Dover
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What’s up everyone! It’s Luke back at it again with another FREE strategy breakdown article for the Würth 400 at Dover Motor Speedway! I hope all of you were able to win last week at Talladega despite all the late race chaos! If you didn’t, let’s change that right now! 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 for Sunday! Let’s get into it!
Race Info
Dover is a 1 mile concrete oval located in Delaware. This track is also known as “The Monster Mile” because it eats up the tires and has high banked turns.
There aren’t any tracks that are super similar to Dover, but you could look at data from Bristol (concrete) and Darlington as tire fall off plays a big role there like it will this weekend.
Hendrick Motorsports has been the team to beat here with Chase Elliott winning last year’s race and Alex Bowman winning in 2021. With the speed the team has shown this season, I doubt their drivers won’t play a factor for the win.
Track position will play an important role here as it’s difficult to pass which means a mistake on pit road or a penalty can severely impact a driver’s finish or their dominator potential.
NASCAR already decided to move the race up an hour early because of the high chance of rain on Sunday. This means we could see some Monday racing with a postponement or a race to lap 200 depending on when it hits the track.
With this only being a 1 mile track, we have to expect lap traffic to play a factor assuming we get some long green flag runs. We’ve seen some cars that run great out front and then struggle once they’re in the dirty air.
This event on Sunday is 400 laps with 120 laps for stage 1, 130 laps for stage two, and a 150 lap finale to the checkered flag. The race locks at 1:09 EST on DraftKings and 1:00 on FanDuel. Now, let’s talk about lineup construction!
Note: In practice, we saw tires wearing quickly which means we could potentially see some issues during longer green flag runs throughout the race with drivers cutting tires.
Lineup Construction
Dominator points will play a significant role this weekend with 400 laps on Sunday, and DraftKings already knows this with 6 drivers above 10k for salary. Assuming they run all the laps, there would be a maximum of around 250 dominator points available. This means we’ll probably want at least two drivers in our lineups that are capable of leading.
We can also build some of our lineups prepared for a race with only 200 laps. In this scenario, we would probably want to target mostly drivers up front and avoid the place differential plays. With it being difficult to pass, there might not be enough time for the drivers starting deep to gain track position and score well for DFS. This means finishing position might be more important if this happens. The mid tier plays would look a lot more appealing on a lower scoring slate with less dominator points.
I’ve always liked the strategy of stacking drivers from the same team as if one of the guys is fast, the others should have lots of speed as well. An example could be playing both Kyle Larson and William Byron together. They’re the most expensive drivers on the slate but if both score some dominator points and finish well, they could make the optimal lineup together and help you win tournaments.
Stars and scrubs builds are great for a race like this as we’re trying to capture as many dominator points as we can. Playing 2-3 of these top tier guys is a great way of increasing your chances of hitting the correct lap leader and could help lineup upside as well. There’s enough in the value tier that this strategy is viable.
Looking at the race here last year, we had four dominators with Elliott leading 73 laps, Chastain leading 86, Kyle Busch leading 103, and Hamlin leading 63. All of them made the optimal lineup except Denny because of his poor 21st place finish. Something like this could happen again with varying strategies as drivers will try to gain track position in whatever they can. This is why dominators will be an important part of this slate.
One thing we have to know is that if a driver pits off sequence to everyone else, they will rack up all the fast laps until someone else pits. They’ll definitely lose track position but can make it up quickly with the bonus points. We saw this happen at Richmond with Josh Berry who had a massive score scoring over 40+ fast laps and finishing 2nd. I wish I could tell you which driver that’ll be if there is one but nobody knows.
With qualifying rained out, we have a weird starting grid but assuming there’s an early competition caution, it should help the drivers starting a little further back move up through the field.
Overall, our lineups should prioritize dominators, and we can build our lineups by stacking teams or like a stars and scrubs build. Again, use these strategies as things to think about when building your teams. You don’t have to use them, but these are things I’m considering from a tournament perspective. Alright, let’s move onto the pivot points now!
Pivot points
With how the starting grid looks, I think this a good race to go through each pricing tier and talk about some of the potential pivot plays or guys we can get some leverage on over the field. Let’s get started with the top tier!
Larson, Byron, Elliott, Hamlin, Bell, and Truex are the six drivers above 10k this weekend on DraftKings, so they’re assuming it’s going to be Hendrick Motorsports vs Joe Gibbs Racing for the win.
Of the three Hendrick cars in this range, I’m expecting Byron to be the lowest owned with Larson offering more PD and Elliott winning the race here last season. This makes him a nice pivot or stacking option with one of his teammates. Larson and Elliott will probably project better though.
For the JGR cars, I think Truex will be the chalkiest at his price, but his teammate Hamlin looks like a good pivot for tournaments. He’ll definitely have ownership, but I think his inconsistency to put together good finishes will keep it in check. Denny hasn’t had that dominating performance yet this season, so maybe it’ll happen this weekend at Dover.
Moving onto the 9k range, I love being overweight on a guy like Harvick at his price point. I think he’s a guy that could finish top 5 and score some fast laps on the longer green flag runs with his excellent track history here. Maybe people will be off of him because of his last two poor finishes.
The 8k range is where things get interesting because we have three drivers (Blaney, Keseslowski, and Briscoe) who are all affordable and could be early lap leaders in this race. Logano and Bubba will be the highest owned in this range because they offer place differential and are safer plays.
Keselowski is the driver I love the most in this range as a pivot because both RFK cars were fast in practice, and I think he’ll have the speed early on to lead. I’m sure he’ll have some ownership, but he could score well leading early and finishing close to the front.
In the 7k range, there’s not much I like for pivots. I was hoping Stenhouse would start around 15th but starting inside the top 10 makes him tough to like as a pivot other than trying to get different. Berry is a strong option, but he’s not really a pivot on this slate as ownership should be there. I might be overweight on him though.
The value tier is where there’s a lot of place differential and pivot options. Cindric and Almirola stick out as potential pivot options off of guys like McDowell and Austin Dillon. Both of these were good in practice and can finish top 15. If you have a chalky build with your other drivers, pivoting to one of these two could be a good way to get a little different.
Finally, we have this range of Allmendinger, Gilliland, Haley, Gragson, Burton, and LaJoie who we’ll be looking to finish off our lineups with. It was fun always mentioning Todd as a pivot but with him starting 35th, he’ll probably be one of the more popular value options.
For pivots in this range, my favorites are Justin Haley and Harrison Burton. Haley is starting a little further up than everyone else but is always capable of a top 20 finish. Burton makes me want to puke, but he offers enough PD and is affordable where a 25th for him isn’t bad. I would recommend LaJoie, but I think he’ll see decent ownership at his price and recent performances.
Overall, I’d say there’s definitely a pivot or two in each price range. I usually prefer to pivot in the mid tier or value because the dominators will score the most fantasy points. You can’t come back from having the wrong lap leader in GPPs. This definitely looks like an interesting slate for sure from a tournament perspective.
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 @laltmayer, and let’s keep the momentum going! You can follow me on Twitter @DFS_NASCAR_Zone! Good luck everyone!