We have come full circle! After a fantastic 18 races, we had back to Daytona to rerack it and finish the season. Of course, Daytona is a restrictor plate track – so we have to attack this slate different then usual. Much like last week at Sonoma, we stand to have a huge edge if we approach this correctly. As always, let’s begin by taking a look at Daytona:
Track Specifications:
Track/Race Length: 2.5 mile oval, 160 laps, 400 miles
Race segments/stages: Laps 40, 80 and 160 (with overtime possible only at end of race)
2.5 mile tri-oval with 31-degree banking in the turns
18-degree banking in the tri-oval and 6-degree banking on the straightaways
Banking in turns 1-4: 31 degrees
Banking in tri-oval: 18 degrees
Banking on backstretch: 3 degrees
Banking on the straightaway: 6 degrees
Length of frontstretch: 3,800 feet
Length of backstretch: 3,400 feet
Pit Road Speed: 55 mph
Pace Car Speed: 70 mph
Pit Road Length: 1,600 feet
Pit Road Width: 50 feet
I am going to repost this from my article in Feburary, because it is very relevant still.
Daytona 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 really, we need to at having one dominator at most. Our main strategy will be having 5 – 6 place differential drivers, while for the most part ignoring salaries. Very seldom does the optimal Daytona lineup feature a max salary lineup – and you need to consider this when using an optimizer to make your lineups. You want to be sure the optimizer is JUST focused on maximizing score with the only constraint being salary < 50000.
Nearly 8/10 times, the race winner is going to come from the top ten, which makes things difficult because we really don’t want to play more than one driver starting in the top ten in our fantasy lineups. 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.
Anyone on the top list is worth taking a look at. That list shows average finish, key word: FINISH. They avoid the tumultuous nature of the Daytona, and have lower than average incident exposures. If any of these drivers start in the top ten, it will be worth taking a look at them as potential dominators or race winners.
This list shows driver rating, which measures performance as a factor as average running position. People on this list finish well WHEN they finish, but if they don’t appear on the above list, the obviously poise a higher DNF rate, and thus are riskier plays.
So that should give you an idea of how to find your dominator. Here’s a few things to consider when building the place differential part of your lineup:
- Most importantly, the restrictor plates. On 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 is only 160 laps. Meaning we limited LL and FL points. This puts a premium on on place differential..
Now regardless of what strategy you play this week – Daytona has a DNF rate of >20%. Meaning every driver in the field this Saturday will have a one in five chance of not completing all the laps. 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. Check back Friday for Taco’s Fast 40, and Saturday for The Sway Bar, where I will target some big time plays for Saturday night.
Other DFS Army NASCAR Content
DFS Army Domination Station Nascar Optimizer
DFS Army Domination Station Optimizer NASCAR Tutorial
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