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The Sway Bar: Top plays and pivots for DraftKings at Las Vegas

Hello everyone and welcome to the Sway Bar! This season I will be taking over the Sway Bar article and putting a couple of spins on it. I will be focusing largely on the RS and how to manipulate it to find our top plays. This week we go to a standard track, not the crazy chaos type we seen at Daytona! Therefore, this article will be more in-depth with the RS given that we have more meaningful stats to decipher from now. Hope you enjoy it! You can find me in Slack any day of the week, or on Twitter @AUFan30 if you have any questions!

 

Tracks Tab

The first section we will look at is the Tracks tab of the RS. This tab will tell us exactly what stats we are looking for regarding Las Vegas Motor Speedway. If we find Las Vegas Motor Speedway under the “Track Name” section, we find the info we need about the track.

This tab also tells us very important stats regarding previous scores on this track. The next section I will look at is the “Avg Green Flag Run %”. This section shows us if a race is filled with wrecks, or if there is a steady run. The more wrecks there are, the better the cheap punts will be as they can move up easier, hence why we load up on them at tracks like Daytona and Talladega. However, if a race stays green, this helps our mid-tier and stud drivers who have place differential upside or dominator upside. As we see in this section, Las Vegas Motorspeedway ranks as the second safest track of all tracks with a 16.10% Avg Green Flag Run rating. This will massively help our mid-tier and dominators and will hurt our punt and pay down options this week.

Next, we will look at the “Avg Pole Laps Led” section. In this section, we are really focusing on our pole-sitter. This week’s pole-sitter is Kyle Busch, though due to a penalty, he will be dropped to the rear on pace laps and will be scored from first. Regardless, when we look at the Avg Pole Laps Led section, we see that this is actually an unfavorable track for pole-sitters in terms of laps led, ranking 19th with an average of only 29.6 laps led for pole-sitters.

The other consideration we have for choosing dominators is fast laps. Therefore, the next section we will look at is the “Avg Pole Fast Laps” section. Here we see that this track ranks 17th for fast laps with only an average of 20.9 fast laps.

We also want to take a look at how our Top 10 and our back of the pack guys rate out here. If we look at the “Avg DK FP % Top 10” section, we see that Vegas ranks 19th with a rating of only 3.0%. When we look at the “Avg DK FP % 30th+” section, we confirm our suspicions of bad drivers, seeing that Vegas ranks 21st with a rating of only 1.5%.

 

Track Types Tab

The track types section is fairly straightforward to read and understand. This section tells us what drivers best tracks are. We already know that Vegas is a 1.5-Mile Intermediate track (see the screenshot in the Tracks Tab section), so that is the section we will focus on here. When we look at this section, we notice that Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. absolutely crush these types of tracks. Kevin Harvick has an average driver rating of 117.6 on these tracks, good for 8% better than similarly priced drivers on the average. We also see that Truex has an average driver rating of 115.5, good for 7% better than similarly priced drivers on the average.

We can also use this section to see what mid-tier drivers are solid here as well. We will focus primarily on the “Vs Avg” section for them. Here, we notice that Almirola, Stenhouse, Austin Dillon, and Buescher are noticeably better than drivers of similar prices on these tracks. Let’s take note of these guys as we further our research.

One important thing to note with this tab is that it is a historical average. This means it doesn’t consider drivers changing teams or equipment. Therefore, I am not looking into Matt DiBenedetto’s rating here, for example, too much as he is in much better equipment this season. For comparison’s sake, DiBenedetto is running the same car Menard had last year, and in my opinion, is a much better driver than Menard was. Menard had an average driver rating on these tracks with his car of 67.1, which is 18.9 better than Matt DiBenedetto had last season.

 

DKAvgByStart Tab

The next tab I always look at is the “DKAvgByStart” tab on the RS. This is located on the bottom tabs when you open the RS. Doing this shows us 3 sections I love to look at for every race. If we look to the right side of the screen, we see “Averages By 5 Starting Positions” for Studs, Mid-Tier, and Scrubs. These are the sections I believe hide a huge key at pretty much every track we go to.

Taking a look at our “Studs” (drivers who have a 90+ Season Long Driver Rating Average) section, we see that our Studs starting 21 – 25 usually score the highest here, with a 62.1 FP average. However, due to the way qualifying was set this week, we have no studs starting in this section. Our next best section is Studs starting 16 – 20, with those drivers scoring 51.6 FP on average. Unfortunately, we again have no one starting in this section to target. The same goes for our 26 – 30 section, our next best score with an average of 51.4 FP. However, Studs starting 1 – 5 rate out to an average of 49.3 FP. We finally have drivers to look at in this section! We have, due to pre-race inspection failures, Truex rolling off first with Harvick right beside him to start this race. We already know those two are dominant on these track types, and they are looking like very strong options for us on this slate. We also have Joey Logano in this section and he is the defending champion here, so he definitely warrants some consideration for us. We also see at the bottom of the Studs section the average points and stats for all Studs here, and it is a very good section to look at for deeper GPP numbers.

Taking a look at our “Mid-Tier” (drivers who have a 50-90 Season Long Driver Rating Average), we see that Mid-Tier guys starting 21 – 25 again score the best. Here we see that Austin Dillon and Chris Buescher make the list, and we already have seen them in our Track Types tab as strong drivers on this track type. Let’s take note of them as we move along. We also notice that Ty Dillon is in this section, but he came in at a -7% Vs Avg rating on our Track Types tab. Therefore, I will be limiting any exposure to him to MME only. Again, take note of the Avg numbers for Mid-Tier drivers here for GPP purposes.

Finally, let’s take a look at our “Scrubs” (Sub-50 Season Long Driver Rating Average) section. We notice that drivers starting 36 – 40 tend to score best, but they only score an average of 15.7 FP. They also only complete an average of 232 laps, which tells me we may want to look elsewhere this week.

 

SpeedRanks Tab

The SpeedRanks tab shows us how drivers fared on different tracks last season. We will mainly use this section to look for our better Mid-Tier and Studs options. If we scroll down to Las Vegas under the “Track” section, we see that Joey Logano had the best average speed rank as well as the 6th best fast lap rank. However, we again notice just how dominant Truex and Harvick were, in particular at this track. Another driver that really stands out to me in this section is Aric Almirola. He ranked as the 8th best average speed rank with the 4th best fast lap rank. We already know he was a strong driver from our Track Types tab and this sweetens the deal for us.

 

DraftKings Tab

The first section I want to look at in the DraftKings tab is the “Practice 2” section. I weigh Practice 2 speeds slightly more as these speeds are the closest we will see them be to the actual race. If we take note of the Green Flag % we found early (second longest green flag run on average), we will want to target the long run practice speeds here. Most drivers will choose to run a 15-Lap consecutive time, so that is the section we will key in on. Here we see that Alex Bowman posted the best 15-Lap Average, with Ross Chastain posting the second-best and Kyle Larson rounding out our Top 3 drivers.

We also want to take note of the practice speeds as a whole. We tend to notice consistencies with practice speeds, and those are the drivers that are typically very comfortable with their cars and will look to have strong days. The one driver that really stands out here is Aric Almirola. Aric was the best driver in Practice 1 and continued to be strong in Practice 2. We also notice Alex Bowman staying consistent in both practices. Finally, we notice how steep a jump Harvick and Jimmie Johnson made between Practice 1 and Practice 2 speeds. This tells me these teams modified the cars to the point the drivers were very comfortable with and were able to turn in great times and speeds as a result.

The next section I want to look at is the “Las Vegas Stats” section. This section tells us how drivers have done at Las Vegas in their careers. Looking at this section, we notice just how dominant Kevin Harvick has been with an average driver rating of 127.1, an average running position of 4.0 and an average of 82 lead laps. We also notice Brad Keselowski (as mentioned by @Sniper – STAFF in his DFS Express Podcast) with a very strong history as well: 114.0 average driver rating, an average running position of 6.7 and an average finishing position of 3.2! One driver I’m really taking note of for GPP’s is Jimmie Johnson. Jimmie was extremely fast in Practice 2 and really stands out in the Las Vegas Stats section as well.

Finally, when we have the drivers we are really focusing on, for example, Kevin Harvick, Aric Almirola, Austin Dillon, we want to check out the “Projections” section to make sure the projections are popping these guys as well. We see that Harvick is the highest projected driver on the slate, with Almirola being a very solid Mid-Tier option and Austin Dillon rating higher than those around him. These may be the guys we start our cash builds with.

 

NillyJay’s NASCAR Tools

The final thing we want to do when getting ready to set up the DS is check out NillyJay’s NASCAR tools. Nilly has made a Lineup Projector that you can use to project how a cash lineup you’ve built would score. For example, let’s just plug in some guys real quick. In the lineup projector, you have to make your own projections that you can insert into the boxes and customize yourself based on how you believe the race will go! The “Target for 25%” is the number we want our lineup to hit for cash lineups, and the “Target for 33%” is the number we want our lineups to hit for GPP’s.

Nilly also has an MKF (Monkey Knife Fight) tool for our prop betting friends! This tool truly is unique in the industry and you can use it to attack props that MKF offers on their website, www.monkeyknifefight.com. For example, MKF has a prop at the moment on their website that if you hit 2/2 on, you get 2.5X your buy-in on! The prop is simple, Harvick Over/Under 68.5 MKF points and Kyle Busch Over/Under 64.5 MKF points. If we pull the projections from the RS into this prop calculator, we see that Harvick and Busch are both projected to hit slightly under their prop totals. Therefore, we would go under on both! That simple!

Finally, Nilly has a Race Calculator that details everything we need to know about this track for both sites. We see for DraftKings purposes, Nilly recommends 1 – 2 dominators for this race. Therefore, in the DS, I would set a rule under the “Dominator Stacking Options” of  “At most 2 players”. We also see this race has a medium cash game risk, which is average for most races this season.

 

Top Studs

  1. Kevin Harvick $12,000
  2. Brad Keselowski $11,100
  3. Martin Truex Jr. $11,600

 

Top Mid-Tier Plays

  1. Jimmie Johnson $8,400
  2. Aric Almirola $7,800
  3. Austin Dillon $6,900

 

Top GPP Pivots

  1. Ryan Blaney $9,200
  2. Alex Bowman $8,700
  3. Matt DiBenedetto $7,400

 

That’ll do it for this week’s The Sway Bar! If you enjoyed, please give me a follow on Twitter @AUFan30, or let me know in Slack! If you know of anyone interested in joining the DFS Army, be sure to tell them to use my link https://wp.dfsarmy.com/ref/99/ and use code “AU30” at checkout for 20% their monthly VIP/BTB membership! Can’t wait to see those helmets crushing tournaments this week!