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NASCAR Calming the Chaos 3/3/19 – Las Vegas

Hello again Army, and welcome to this season’s first entry of Calming the Chaos!  There will be a few changes with my article this season, as I want to put more emphasis on the “what” and “why” of NASCAR DFS instead of just the “who” (don’t worry, we have plenty of coverage for that already).  I plan to focus more on lineup construction/correlation, stacks, pivots, game theory, and anything else I can think of that will help you guys and gals build more efficient/higher scoring lineups.

Basically, I want this article to be more of a “companion guide” to my driver list & tools suite.

This will also take place of the notes I do on race day, simply because I want to have more time to help with any questions you may have as we approach lock time.  I enjoy putting notes out pre-race, but I don’t like the feeling of having a bunch of unanswered questions waiting for me to finish up my notes.  Rather, I want to be able to get to those questions much faster, and I think this will help immensely.  So with that out of the way, let’s get to it!

Las Vegas Motor Speedway

As we all know, this week is a fairly big question mark that’s been looming over everybody’s head for quite some time now.  How exactly will this race play out with the new aero package?  Who will it favor and who will it hurt?  For the most part, we don’t know.  Drivers and teams don’t know.  The engineers don’t know, nor do the sponsors, fans, announcers, or anybody else.  There are a ton of unknowns, but no matter what we don’t know, there is one thing we DO know… (go ahead, take a guess!)

That’s right!  No matter what’s going on with the cars and drivers, lineup construction/correlation concerns and scoring stay the same.  Somebody still has to earn the lead laps, somebody has to win, some people have to move back while others move up.  When we look at it that way, some of those unknowns start to get a little easier to look at, and we can fall back to the basics to figure out some good ways to approach this race.

Lineup construction/correlation

Dominators

Looking at the race calculatorwe see that we want 1 or 2 dominators on DraftKings and dominator on FanDuel.  This is a great start as we don’t need to worry about stacking a bunch of them this week.  Also, with how qualifying turned out, we have several dominator/stud hybrids which makes things even easier (we get access to drivers with high ceilings without needing them to lead a ton of laps).

With all of this in mind, our basic approach is pretty, well…basic.  On DraftKings I would start by taking one dominator or dominator/stud hybrid as a primary dominator, then either adding a secondary dominator or continue building that lineup with just that one.

If you run two of them, be sure not to stack two regular dominators in the same lineup.  One dominator + one dominator/stud hybrid or two dominator/stud hybrids are both fine options, but there won’t be enough laps for two front-runners to lead enough of them to both pay off together (especially not with the strong place differential plays we have this week).

Studs

There aren’t a ton of great options here this week, as the hybrids have most of the firepower in the higher price range.  There are still some decent options though, most notably Erik Jones who could wind up in the winning lineup with another top-10 finish.  Feel free to pair him (or any of these studs) up with anybody you want, as they don’t need to lead laps to pay off.

There are a lot of great options in the next category though, and those drivers could keep the ownership of these studs down, so keep that in mind as you’re navigating through your player pool.

Value studs

Another strong price range this week, there are a bunch of great options to choose from here.  SuarezNewman, and Buescher all have high floors & ceilings, and several other drivers aren’t too far behind them (see my driver list for more details).

Like the studs, you can mix and match them as you please, and they will make it much easier to grab those dominator/stud hybrids that everybody will want to have.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see two (or even three) of them together in the same winning lineup.

Value

Not much value here this week, as 4 of the 6 are good fade candidates.  That’s due to them qualifying way too high and because the value studs are looking very strong this week.  The two that remain aren’t overly exciting but are still worth some exposure just in case (mostly as a pivot to the value studs).  Again, mix and match them as you please, though I wouldn’t stack Stenhouse and Burrito together (it’s unlikely that one of them winds up in the winning lineup, let alone both of them).

Punts

It’s mostly business as usual down here; if you’re going heavy with expensive drivers, you’ll probably need a punt.  If you go a bit more balanced, you can probably skip them in favor of more value studs (I would lean more towards doing that).  It’s kind of a crapshoot when trying to guess who will perform the best with these guys, but I’d recommend trying to stay north of the $5,000 mark this week.

Stacks

Due to all of the unknowns this week, it’s hard to recommend many stacks.  They’re either too risky/correlate poorly (i.e. RCR starting way up front), haven’t really found their groove (Hendrick), or some other reason that prevents them from being surefire stacks this week.

With that said, we can still fall back on going with teams we know work together well.  A Penske stack is always in order when aerodynamics are a major discussion, so trying your hand at a few Keselowski/Logano/Blaney lineups could pay off.  A JGR stack could also work, so picking either Denny or Kyle Busch as a primary dominator could go well with Truex Jr acting as a secondary dominator with Erik Jones as a stud.

That same thinking could also work with SHRHarvick would be your main dominator while Bowyer/Almirola/Suarez would act as studs with some secondary dominator potential.  This stack wouldn’t leave much leftover, but you could still afford a strong value stud like NewmanBuescher, or Preece.  This would be an example of a value/stud heavy lineup construction that you may have seen recommended on the race calculator.

Pivots

As always, pivots are the name of the game when it comes to taking down a big tournament.  And like I always say, you don’t need to go crazy on the low-owned pivots to make something happen.  It’s pretty likely that several of the chalky plays wind up in the winning lineup, so we just need to find those 1-2 pivots that tie everything together.

I’ve highlighted several good options in the driver list so be sure to check that out.  Basically, you want to find drivers with similar ceilings to the strongest plays and ease them in when you can.  You can also check the projected ownership in the research station to get an idea of who might go under the radar.

With that in mind, I think the value stud price range will be the one that makes the biggest impact this week.  There are several drivers in good spots that will probably go overlooked, such as ByronBowman, and Menard.  They definitely aren’t as strong as the others are, but we know how a few small moments in a race can cause drastic changes in the outcome.  I’m not saying to go crazy with your pivots, but you don’t want to ignore them, either.

Next would be the dominator/stud hybrids, though most of them will probably be fairly chalky.  Logano could be an exception with his starting position, and he makes an excellent pivot to anybody else in his price range (especially on FanDuel)

Closing thoughts

I think that’s going to wrap it up for this one.  I want to make adjustments to this article as we progress through the season, so please leave some feedback on what you like, don’t like, or would like to see in future articles.  I want to help as much as I can without overloading, so everyone’s feedback would really help out.  Remember, I do these articles for you guys, and I’m only happy if they are helping you win some money!  Tag me @nillyJay in Slack (#nillys-garage-nas-mlb), or just send me a DM if you prefer.  Either way, thanks for reading, and good luck!