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The Competition Caution 2017 NASCAR DFS Talladega Draftkings Preview

Is there anything better than total calamity? ANSWER: Nope. This weekend we roll into Talladega for 2.5 miles of insanity. Of course, Talladega is a restrictor plate track – so we have to attack this slate different than usual. We have MURDERED the plate track slates lately, and we stand to have a huge edge if we approach this correctly. As always, let’s begin by taking a look at Dega:

Superspeedway: 2.66-mile trioval 48 feet wide (12-foot apron)
Turns: Banking: 33 degrees Length: 3,750 feet Radius: 1,100 feet
Trioval: Banking: 18 degrees
Frontstretch: Chute length: 2,150 feet (from turn to middle of trioval);
Total length: 4,300 feet
Stages: 1 ends lap 55, 2 at lap 110, race finish is lap 188 (OT possible)

I am going to repost this from my article in February because it is very relevant still. I am just gonna go ahead and replace “Daytona” with “Talladega”:

Dega presents such a unique challenge for DFS. You want low owned drivers, as always. You want drivers who have poor starting positions but have an opportunity to compete for a win at the end of the day. Most importantly, you want drivers who have the smallest chance of incident(wrecks) and in particular, drivers that will miss the “big one”. This creates a classic catch-22. Statistically, drivers in the top-6 are involved in multi-car wrecks an average 7.87% of the time, compared to drivers towards the middle of the pack, 11th-28th, whose average is closer to 35%-40%. What I am trying to say is, the drivers who start up front and stay up front are low risk, low reward. Whereas drivers who are starting towards the back, need to work their way through the bees nest and expose themselves to extreme incident potential to be high reward.

So we want to target drivers starting towards the back – while at the same time focusing in on drivers who have a low incident rate. To do so – let’s take a little peek at average FINISHING position, rather than average running position. As the old saying goes to finish first, first you must finish – a driver with a high average finish is probably FINISHING races.

Ah yes! The chalk man cometh. It is no surprise that Ricky Stenhouse tops this list, as his rise to restrictor plate king was greatly foreshadowed over the years. He finally broke through this year, bursting into the win column with impressive wins at Daytona and Talladega. He will be the talk of the town this week and will probably qualify in the top five. I am going to leave the Rick-Talk for Saturday on the Sway Bar, after qualifying.

The driver I do want to talk about now is Clint Bowyer. Clint Bowyer is sneakily one of the pound-for-pound best plays at any restrictor plate track thanks to his incredible ability to finish these races. In his 23 career tries at Dega, Clint has finished on the lead lap 18 times, offering up just a 21% incident rate. A pretty fair number for this gruesome track. Clint has been fairly irrelevant this year, and should not be top of mind for most players. He stands to be a valuable play this weekend.

Another guy worth a look is Kurt Busch, whose lifetime average finish sits at 14.2 – but boasts an average finish of 8th over the last three races. The momentum is on his side, and much like Clint – there is no reason to hold back as the 2017 championship is out of grasp. Kurt showed off his plate race prowess back at the Daytona 500 – albeit it was the most impressive performance a win is a win! And a win is certainly in the realm of possibility.

Now allow me to make things even more complicated. More than 8/10 times, the race winner is going to come from the top five and we really have no interest in playing more than one driver starting up front. So how do we target that one driver to play with no meaningful practices, and a historically high DNF race track? Well, we HAVE to take a look at track history, but we have to take it with a grain of salt.

So there are a few drivers I like on this list – Brad Keselowski, Ryan Blaney, Clint, Kurt, Joey Logano, Harvick… I am sure you are seeing the pattern here. The Fords, from top to bottom, are the motto this week. There is a theory, and I’ll stress this is only a theory (I HAVE NO EVIDENCE), that the Ford body style is much more conducive to effective plate racing than the Chevy’s and the Toyota’s – especially when they get out in front of the pack. The last seven plate races have been won by Fords – and to me, that is no coincidence. If you must play someone starting up front, play a Ford.

So that should give you an idea of how to find your dominator. Here are a few things to consider when building the place differential part of your lineup:

  • Most importantly, the restrictor plates. On the track, the cars have about the same horsepower – meaning they will be nose to tail all day. This means drivers who usually aren’t relevant get made relevant, and if there is a crash – it’s going to end the day of 3-15 drivers in an instant.
  • There are only 188 laps. Meaning we have limited LL and FL points. This puts a premium on place differential.

Now regardless of what strategy you play this week – plate tracks have a DNF rate of >20%. Meaning every driver in the field this Sunday will have a one in five chance of crashing out. This makes just about any strategy volatile, and you should be super certain to play within your limits this week. With that in mind, understanding the correct optimal place differential strategy certainly, gives us an edge.

We are going to drop a lot of content this week, so getting signed up to Slack is a great idea. I’m going to try and do a live podcast during qualifying this Saturday, so keep your eyes peeled for that. And of course, check back Saturday night for The Sway Bar.

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