Hello again Army, and welcome to this week’s Calming the Chaos! We make our annual visit to Auto Club this week, a big, wide track that can produce some hilarious 5-wide restarts. Though the track may be big like Daytona, things play out a lot differently here, so we have a bit to talk about on how to approach this one (and how to navigate all the chalk that we’ll encounter). Let’s get to it!
As always, be sure to check out my driver list & tools suite and the coach’s cheat sheet. If you have any questions, reach out to me in Slack at #nillys-garage-nas-mlb and I’ll be happy to help however I can.
Auto Club Speedway
Like I mentioned earlier, this is a big track like Daytona, but we won’t see the same nose-to-bumper racing here. Rather, we’ll see a more traditional race during the green flag runs, but where this track really shines is the insane restarts. Seeing cars go four or even five-wide on the restarts is something unique to this track, and they can get really hectic towards the end of the race.
Anyway, the point here is that even though they’re of similar size, our approach needs to be different, so don’t go cramming in a bunch of punts here. Save that for Talladega!
Weekend approach
Traditionally, this is a good track for both cash games and tournament play. There’s a lot of chalk this week (more on that later), so cash games should be pretty easy to navigate. Some of that chalk will inevitably find its way into the winning lineup, so the task this week will be finding the right pivots to invest in. If you like taking bold shots with low-owned slate-breakers, this will be the race for you!
Chalk alert!
Qualifying this week was…interesting, to say the least. We usually have some chalk to work with every week, but we have a LOT of it this time around. Let’s identify those drivers first.
Truex failed inspection three times and would have started from the back regardless of where he qualified, so the team didn’t bother taking a qualifying lap. He will start – and be scored from – 38th. He’ll likely be the highest owned driver on the board in all formats.
Several drivers decided to really push it today and were trying to set new land speed records. Of course, that just meant that they went into the turns too hard and couldn’t hold it, so they put up some pretty bad qualifying times. Hamlin, Byron, and Jones are among those starting the deepest, but there are others like Kyle Busch, Keselowski, Blaney, Austin Dillon, and Chastain that are starting a lot deeper than they are likely going to finish. All of these drivers are in play in all formats, and unless something really dumb happens, expect to see a handful of these nine drivers in the winning lineup.
Honestly, with the way this all played out, you don’t really need a dominator for basic cash game lineups, so don’t feel like you need to go that route this week. For big ladders and GPP though, that’s certainly an option, and we’ll touch on that now.
Separating yourself from the field
So with all this chalk, how should we approach tournaments? Well, not too differently from other weeks, but we do need to be a little more decisive (and bold) than usual. The first thing we must do is accept the fact that there will be some chalk in the winning lineup, so simply fading it all most likely is not going to pay off. With that in the back of our minds, let’s go over a few different ways we can build lineups to include some chalk and still be different (without wasting lineups with bad plays).
Dominators
The first (and most basic) approach would be to include a dominator from the front of the field (there are only 200 laps in this race, so most lineups would do well to just have one dominator). The two up front – Bowyer and Johnson – are certainly options to consider, but I do worry about their ability to dominate the race for the long haul. I could see one of them leading 30 to 50 or so laps in stage one, but once they lose the lead, I don’t think they’ll get it back. They’ll need to back up any lead laps with a top-5 or so finish to be in the winning lineup. Anyway, I don’t think we need to go crazy here, but it would be worth having exposure to these two (do not stack them).
I’m more interested in guys that could take command of the race for a long time – guys like Larson, Logano, and Keselowski…or even somebody like Bowman, could all lead 50-100 laps and make their way into the winning lineup.
Unless you’re feeling very brave, I would only take one of these guys per lineup. You can try your hand at some two-dominator lineups, but I would only do that in a large field GPP (and I would probably only do about 10% of your total lineups this way…if even that).
Obviously, Truex and Kyle Busch have a pretty high chance of dominating, but since they don’t really need to in order to pay off, I’m not listing them here (hence why they are called dom/stud hybrids).
Fading some mega-chalk
We can also straight up fade some of the mega-chalk; namely Truex, Hamlin, and Jones. These three should be among the most popular drivers, and seeing that nobody is immune to random mishaps, it’s always a viable option to exclude some of them from your driver pool. It’s impossible to know which of them might bust, so unfortunately you’re taking shots in the dark if you go this route. You could fade one, two, or even all three of them if you wish, but all three of them are in that “all or nothing” realm, so you can create some leverage to the field by going one way or the other.
Pivots
Another strong option is to shuffle in some pivots to replace (or go with) the other chalky drivers. Simply making some dominator pivots from earlier is one option, and we’ll go some of the others here.
To start, going heavier on guys like Keselowski, Blaney, and Elliott is one option. While they aren’t “sneaky” plays, they surely won’t have as much ownership as the mega-chalk, but still could see a top-3 finish and just enough of a ceiling to be in the winning lineup. Smash them in to go along with some of the other chalky drivers up top, but I would probably try to limit using just one or two of these guys per lineup (you’re hoping some of the mega-chalk busts, which would lower the ceiling of the winning lineup, and that’s how these guys would pay off).
Stenhouse and DiBenedetto are solid options to attack the mid-range. Both are poised to have a very strong season (possibly a career year), and I don’t think a top-8 is out of the question for them here. While I do like them more on FanDuel, they’re cheap enough on both sites to be useful. You can use them as a direct pivot to Austin Dillon or you can mix and match them. Buescher deserves to be included in this conversation, though I don’t think he’s quite as strong of an option as Stenhouse/DiBenedetto. Anyway, these three are pretty risky since they start so high, but they should come in at pretty low ownership.
The next group would be the other mid-range drivers. They come with a bit more questionable upside, but shouldn’t be overly high-owned and could still be in the winning lineup if the race goes their way. These drivers would include Bell, Custer, and Reddick. All three of them are in cars capable of a strong top-10 finish, but we haven’t seen what they can do in them just yet. That day is coming, and it could very well be here at Auto Club.
Anyway, they can all be used as a pivot to Austin Dillon too…or you can mix and match them (think of them as higher-ceiling, higher-owned options with less risk, where Stenhouse/DiBenedetto/Buescher are medium-ceiling, lower-owned options that carry more risk but could still be in the winning lineup on both sites).
The bottom end is a little messy. Suarez is the logical pivot from Chastain (both look good at a glance, but Chastain’s car is miles ahead of what Suarez is driving), but I’m more interested in Ty Dillon, Nemechek, Preece, and LaJoie. While they may not have super-high ceilings, they could still be in the winning lineup with some help (i.e. a Chastain DNF), because they may score just enough to help tie together some lineups. In other words, I would probably use them as direct pivots to Chastain rather than stacking them.
I have very little interest in the punts this week and don’t care to go below LaJoie here. Long story short, this track plays out a bit like how Phoenix does, in that the slower cars get stuck in staggered formation and don’t have any real chance of making up laps and moving up in the field. This isn’t a super chaotic track, so it’s not very likely that they will gain spots from others wrecking. However, if you think one of the five-wide restarts creates a 10-car pileup, you could always make some Daytona-esque lineups and hope for the best. I would prefer to look elsewhere.
DraftKings vs Fanduel
All things considered, this is actually a race where the differences between the two sites are near a minimum; dominator points could be near irrelevant, the punts don’t have much of a chance to pay off, and finishing position is going to dictate everyone’s ceiling. This all holds true on both sites this week.
The caveat here is that in the event the mega-chalk doesn’t put up big scores, it could be more to your benefit to have the lower-owned pivots on FanDuel.
For example, if Truex finishes 15th and Keselowski finishes 5th, he could still be in the winning lineup on DraftKings (scoring 52 compared to Keselowski’s 49), but on FanDuel you would be looking at 57.5 compared to 61 in favor of Keselowski. That might be enough of a difference to see one of them in the winning lineup on one site, and the other show up on the other one.
In other words, the idea of attacking those kind of drivers on FanDuel is still very much in play, so consider guys like Keselowski, Blaney, Elliott, Stenhouse, DiBenedetto, and Buescher if you aren’t playing them on DraftKings.
You can also use some of the front-runners on FanDuel; Larson, Logano, Harvick, Kurt/Bowman, Almirola, and Bowyer/Johnson, in roughly that order. Remember to mix and match these drivers with the chalkier ones, don’t blindly replace your entire chalky pool with just these guys!
Closing thoughts
This race is going to be a true test of effectively using the pivots, perhaps one of the best we’ll have all season. There’s a lot of chalk primed to put up big scores, but there’s also a fair amount of pivots in spots to put up just enough to help tie together the winning lineup. Mind the pivots, pray for some chaos, and let’s win some money. Good luck, and I’ll see you all in Slack!