DailyFanRacing Newsletter - NASCAR Vegas & F1
What is up everyone?! Ryan Larkin here with another DailyFanRacing Newsletter. As many of you may know, I LOVE my F1 racing and the new season kicks off this week from Melbourne, Australia. Not only is F1 back but we have all three NASCAR Series in action from Las Vegas. It is a MASSIVE four slate weekend for us & I can’t wait!
Weekend schedule
Friday March 14th - Truck Series Ecosave 200 & Ryan’s Birthday
Saturday March 15th - The LiUNA! Xfinity Series Race
Sunday March 16th - F1 from Australia 12 am ET (Sat. Night for west coast)
Sunday March 16th - Cup Series Pennzoil 400
NASCAR
We have a fantastic weekend ahead from Vegas. The Truck Series race on Friday night always delivers a good show and even a surprise winner or two. Nelson Piquet Jr, John Wes Townley, and Rajah Caruth are some of the surprise winners here at Vegas. Equipment is EVERYTHING for the Truck Series at this track so make sure to keep that in mind.
The Las Vegas Xfinity races are also all about quality of equipment and it also has a trend of surprise winners. AJ Allmendinger was certainly a surprise winner of the fall race here last year. Riley Herbst dominated and grabbed his first win in 2023. We also saw Josh Berry during his first year in a part time campaign win at Vegas. Much like the Truck Series, if you hit this track right, you can be borderline untouchable.
One trend that really sticks out to me is that the last eight Vegas winners in the Xfinity Series started 8th or worse. Having that extra little bit of downforce might hurt in qualifying but it tends to pay dividends come race time.
Lastly, we have the Cup Series race on Sunday. Dustin was nice enough to send me the past optimal graphic a little early this week so I could share it in this newsletter. Dustin does an amazing job with his preview Deep Dive sections for every race which includes this graphic being available for all three series.
The biggest take away for this week is that lineup construction is about as straightforward as it gets. We will look to play 2 dominators or a third if the salary allows us to. Last year in this race we got Tyler Reddick at 8.9k. Obviously, that wasn’t a difficult play to afford. Same goes for Byron at 9.1k and Logano at 8.9k.
The other thing that we need to hit on are those place differential plays. Optimals in 5 out of the 6 Next Gen races have featured drivers starting 20th or worse. We have also seen a driver start 18th end up on the optimal on three different occasions.
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Australian GP - Formula 1
F1 is back!!
I am so excited for the new season to kick off. The 2024 season was unbelievable to watch. The greatest season of my lifetime for sure. We saw a record SEVEN different multi-time winners. To put some context on that, NASCAR also had seven multi-time winners last year but with 12 more races on the schedule. Last year truly was one of the most competitive seasons ever.
A wonderful side effect of this was that the F1 DFS slates became far less predictable for the field and we were able to gain a bigger edge on the field. FiveHorizons ended up taking down the final F1 slate of the year solo.
This new year is going to be a wild one as well. We have TEN driver changes across the 20 teams. That is a lot of shaking & moving among the teams and a lot to unpack for the DFS side of things.
As we have grown, I have passed my F1 love to some of our newest members who are going to be tackling F1 DFS for the first time this year. I wanted to touch on a key element of the DFS scoring to help anyone looking to get into F1 this year.
The most crucial aspect of lineup building aside from the very likely nature that you need the race winner at the captain spot is the teammate points.
There are 10 teams in F1 with 2 cars per team. For instance, this year Ferrari has Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc. Whichever driver beats their teammate secures 5 points for their total in the race. This plays a crucial aspect in how we round out lineups. Most of the bottom 10 drivers in the finishing order & on DK will only score 1-4 points. You get 1 point if a driver finishes the race and then there are some place differential points that can be scored. However, you would then add the teammate points to that total if a driver wins their matchup.
Example: Nico Hulkenberg $3.8k & Gabriel Bortoleto $3.0k are teammates at Sauber. They are expected to have the worst car and finish toward the back in most races. They will also be some of the cheapest plays on the slate. If they finish the race though, whoever wins this matchup will score 6-9 points depending on how the race plays out.
This will outscore roughly 5 or 6 drivers on the slate and match the scores of another 3 or 4. The biggest factor though is the value. Fernando Alonso can beat his teammate and finish 10th and only score 7 points. Meanwhile, Hulkenberg can start 19th and finish 19th and score 6 points at $1.6k less. This cheaper salary allows you to afford the race winner and the best constructor play which in turn helps you build the best lineups.
I hope this helps. If you ever have any questions though, make sure to reach out in the discord and we will get you dialed in.
As I have mentioned plenty of times already, we deliver the BEST in racing DFS content. Not only that, but we absolutely NEVER miss a slate and we do it at a LOWER price than the competition. I strive to make this the best experience for you & I hope you will join us at DailyFanRacing.com.
