Gooood morning Army! Welcome to this week’s VIP breakdown for Sonoma Raceway. This is the first road course of the season, which makes me excited not just as a DFS player, but as a racing fan as well. Today I’m going to cover the basics of this race, lineup construction & correlation, cash vs GPP approaches, and key areas where we can find edges to help us win a big tournament. Let’s get to it!
Sonoma Raceway
Ah, Sonoma. Home of fine wine and the most technical track on the NASCAR circuit. If you haven’t noticed by now, I love it when a driver’s skill is weighted more heavily than anything else, and this is probably the best example of that we get all year long. Of the two road courses (we won’t count the Roval for now), Sonoma is the slower and more technical one, which puts more emphasis on drivers who have mastered this track and less on those in better cars with a shaky history. Because of the differences between the two tracks, I would put a lot more weight on researching Sonoma as an individual track rather than combining the history of both Sonoma and Watkins Glen.
Toyota/Save Mart 350
The first thing you should notice is that we only have 110 laps at this race, which is the second fewest of the entire season. This makes dominators mostly unimportant (especially on FanDuel), and puts a huge importance on finishing position and whatever place differential we can get. I’ll get into cash vs GPP later in the article, but I would not roster more than one dominator in any format this week. Instead, go after finishing position and place differential with the least expensive drivers you can, and take any laps led as a bonus.
Over the last five races here, the driver with the most laps led is Martin Truex Jr, and he’s only led 76 of them. Most of those came from one race where he started 14th and won, leading 51 laps along the way. A situation like that is when a dominator is nice to have here, but that’s only happened once in the last five years. If we ignore drivers who led 9 or fewer laps, the average “dominator” at Sonoma has only led an average of 24.78 laps, which is a whopping 6.19 DKFP or 2.47 FDFP. That’s also split over 19 drivers, which means on average, we have nearly four different drivers leading at every race. That’s NOT something we need to build around!
This is one of very few times where we could see a winning lineup on DraftKings full of $8k drivers, so don’t be afraid to leave some salary on the table! I wouldn’t go crazy with a $35k lineup like at a plate race, but lineups leaving a couple thousand on a table have a legitimate chance of winning here. I’ll touch more on this in the GPP section.
Lineup construction / correlation
Lineups can be built like normal this weekend, just with less emphasis on dominators and a lot more on finishing position/place differential. Drivers that can finish in the top-10 are ones we need to target, especially those starting deeper in the field. Because the mid-range drivers have a higher floor/ceiling here than at most other tracks, this also puts much less importance on the punts. There are times to roll out a stars & scrubs lineup, but Sonoma is not the place to do it! A balanced or mid-range heavy lineup are the ways to go this week.
One glance at the research station shows exactly what I’m talking about. Look at the $8,000 to $9,300 range on DraftKings (it’s a little different on FanDuel because they bumped a lot of those drivers up). Notice that the majority of them are projected for over 40 DKFP, and the highest projected driver today is in this range as well. You should also note that no driver is projected to lead over 20 laps. This isn’t taco just being conservative like other sites are, that’s really how races play out here. So again I say, dominators are not the focal point of this race!
While dominators may not be as important, lineup correlation still is. Instead of dominators being the focal point for correlation, we need to look at finishing position and place differential instead. This is more important in tournaments (and I’ll include some examples there), as we can simply ignore a lot of the drivers that would be impacted by this in our cash games. If you’re unsure of who I’m talking about, I’ll mark them as GPP plays on my driver sheet in my Slack channel: #nillys-garage-nas-mlb
Cash games approach
Since we only have one race this week, I want to take some extra time to go into more detail about picking drivers. It may look like I’m bouncing around a little bit here, but I’m going to go over drivers in the same order in which I build my lineups.
If you haven’t read my intermediate article that goes over how I build cash game lineups, you can do so here (scroll down near the end of the article, it’s under the “cash games / roster construction” section).
You may be wondering how a road course can be cash safe. Fair question! But due to the nature of this race (and how much slower the cars are), there just isn’t that much chaos here. In fact, since 2010, there are an average of 2 fewer DNF’s here than the average of every other track combined. Only two others are safer (at 2.3 fewer), and they are Richmond and Las Vegas. Add in the fact that drivers are fairly predictable here, and we have a recipe for a pretty solid cash game investment.
Chalky cash plays
So now that we we feel good about playing cash here, let’s start at the top and find our obvious chalk. Kurt Busch pops off the page and I expect him to be chalky. After him we can look at Clint Bowyer and Denny Hamlin. All three of these guys have a solid track history here (Denny needed some extra time to figure it out here, but he has) and make excellent plays in all formats. I would recommend taking at least two of them in every cash lineup today. If you can’t decide on who to take (or are just running a single cash lineup), I’d recommend Kurt + Bowyer.
Cash dominators
After that we look at dominators which, as I’ve said before, are not overly important here. Still, it’s good to anchor a lineup with at least one of them for cash, so I’d recommend grabbing one. The two guys up front (Kyle Larson and Martin Truex Jr) are our most likely candidates. Due to Larson’s history, however, I’m leaning towards Truex Jr for cash and Larson for tournaments.
The reason for that is simple: in four races, Larson has never qualified worse than 5th place here, but he’s never finished better than 12th and has only led 9 laps. That’s not the kind of floor we want from our cash dominator!
Why does he struggle like that here after qualifying so well? Simply put, there’s a big difference between running laps fast by yourself and being able to navigate this course with a bunch of other cars around you. I need to see him perform better from the front before I can start recommending him in cash.
Cash value drivers (under $7k)
Most of the drivers in the lower salary range kind of suck here, but that’s to be expected. Looking at their track history though, two stand out to me: Kasey Kahne and Paul Menard. While it’s true that Kahne was in a better car during part his impressive run here, remember that his driving skill played a much bigger part of that, and having a top-tier car here is not a free pass to a good finish (looking at you, Larson!).
Menard’s history is solid here too (and he has a much better car this time around) so I like him today as well. However, since Kasey has the higher floor, I’ll opt for him in cash. Kasey also doesn’t have to worry about all of those faster cars (that start right in front of him) taking away from his floor/ceiling, so that’s another great reason to take him instead. He correlates well with nearly any lineup today.
After that, there’s not a whole lot to love for cash. If you need to go cheap, I’d probably look at Michael McDowell or Matt DiBenedetto. I wouldn’t recommend going crazy in this price range (or cheaper) though, as there are several great mid-ranged options that can give us plenty of value. Again, we don’t need to dumpster dive here with a stars and scrubs lineup. Leave that for the fishies!
Cash value drivers (above $7k)
I don’t love anybody in this range for cash games, but Austin Dillon is viable since he’s starting so far back and has never finished worse than 22nd here.
Cash studs (above $8k)
We’ve already identified three of them (Kurt, Clint, Denny), but there others that do well here too. Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, Joey Logano, Jimmie Johnson, Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney all have some good history here and are capable of a top-10 finish. Of the group, I’d lean Busch, Harvick, then Logano for cash, and save the rest for tournaments.
I did not include Aric Almirola or AJ Allmendinger in that group, and it was on purpose. Both of them have a shaky history here lately (nothing higher than a 12th place finish for either one of them since 2012), and Allmendinger is starting very high. I would absolutely include them in your tournament driver pool, but I don’t recommend either of them in cash today. I know Allmendinger is supposed to be “the guy” at road courses, but he’s had much better success at Watkins Glen than he has here at Sonoma.
Tournament approach
Now that we know who we like in cash, we can figure out who we want to take shots with in tournaments.
Chalky plays
Our trio from before (Kurt, Clint, Denny) should be who we make a decision on first. Remember that we only need one or two “sneaky” plays to win, so don’t be afraid to eat some chalk here. Of the three, I’d probably go lighter (or fade) Denny first. Me personally, I’m taking all three in tournaments, but will be heaviest on Kurt and Clint. I plan to go overweight on the field with them and about average or so with Denny.
If you want to try and give yourself an edge, this is a great place to do it. You can go overweight, underweight, or straight up lock/fade any of these three to try and get an edge over the field.
Dominators
Given Larson’s history, this is an easy decision for me. I plan to go underweight on him, but I don’t recommend outright fading him, as there’s always a chance he comes through. I plan to go average or slightly underweight with Truex Jr, mainly due to me wanting to go heavier on the mid-range drivers instead. Harvick can be used as a dominator pivot here, but I would NOT use him in the same lineups that Larson or Truex are in. I wouldn’t use those two together in the same lineup either.
Value drivers (under $7k)
There aren’t a ton of options I like here outside of the four I mentioned above. If you want to take some shots here though, you could look at Wallace or Byron. I would not go heavy on them though, as neither of them have raced here before and that usually leads to a bad day. If you go with Byron, try not to go overboard on place differential, as he needs to finish at least 12th or so to pay off. If you roster 4-5 guys that all pass him, well…they’re eating into that lineup’s ceiling. A 25th place finish from Wallace will match a 12th place finish from Byron, and it’s going to be a lot easier for Wallace to do that.
After that, I’m really only interested in taking some shots with Ty Dillon, Chris Buescher, and Cole Whitt. The rest have poor history/starting postion, so I’m not afraid to go very light or just fade them outright. If you don’t like a driver’s history here, don’t be afraid to go underweight on them. History often repeats itself at Sonoma.
I plan to put these guys into four different tiers: Kahne, then Menard, then Dillon/Buescher/Whitt, then Wallace/Byron. I plan to go heaviest on Kahne and then work my way down, and probably only taking about 5-15% Wallace/Byron in my 150 lineups.
Studs (above $8k)
I already mentioned who I liked here earlier (Harvick, Kyle Busch, Logano, Johnson, Elliott, and Blaney) for cash, and I plan to have some of each of them in GPP. If you’re looking for another edge, this could be a place to do it too by taking a stand on some of these guys. Kyle Busch and Harvick are both expensive and will have the hardest times paying off their salary. If you want to go underweight (or just fade) one of them in GPP, I’d do that with Kyle Busch first. After them, I would consider going underweight on Logano, Elliott, and Johnson in that order. If you’re unsure or just want to play it safe, just have some exposure to all of them and try to win elsewhere.
Value drivers (above $7k)
There are several good GPP options here. Austin Dillon has the highest ceiling, though his chances of hitting that ceiling are a bit low. Suarez is probably the most well-rounded GPP play in this group. Newman is in a weird spot but deserves some exposure (probably about as much as you give Menard).
Bowman and Jones haven’t raced here much and have poor history. McMurray is a mixed bag, but I hate his starting position of 4th. Bowman and Jones might not even move up, and McMurray probably has the most difficult path to paying off his salary of the entire field…and he’s not even that expensive! He needs a top-5 to do that, and he’s only done it twice in 15 races. Still, it’s possible, and a top-5 finish from him puts him in the winning lineup, so we can’t ignore him.
Is it over yet?!
Whew! Okay, that was longer than I had planned, but I wanted to put some theory into this article since we only have one race to focus on this week. I won’t make the next one so long! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you guys in Slack. Good luck today!