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 Fontana for the Auto Club 400. 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 Auto Club Speedway. If we find Auto Club 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, Auto Club Speedway ranks as the ninth safest track of all tracks with a 11.90% Avg Green Flag Run rating. This will 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 Clint Bowyer. 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 16th with an average of only 46.0 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 16th for fast laps with only an average of 24.1 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 Auto Club ranks 16th with a rating of only 3.1%. When we look at the “Avg DK FP % 30th+” section, we see that Auto Club ranks 7th with a rating of 2.0%.
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 Auto Club is a 2-Mile Large/Flat 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 Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick absolutely crush these types of tracks. Kyle Busch has an average driver rating of 116.3 on these tracks, good for 7% better than his overall average driver rating. We also see that Harvick has an average driver rating of 113.2, good for 5% better than his overall average driver rating.
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 Jones, Bowyer, Suarez, and Byron are noticeably better on these tracks than other ones on the schedule. 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.
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 59.9 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 1 – 5, with those drivers scoring 53.9 FP on average. Here we have a few drivers to choose from! Bowyer (1st) and Kevin Harvick (5th) highlight this section. We need to look deeper into these guys.
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 31 – 35 score the best with an average of 34.7 FP. Here we see that Daniel Suarez pops up, with an 80.6 Driver Rating on these tracks last season. Keep in mind, he is in different equipment this year, however.
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 17.4 FP. They also only complete an average of 188 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 Auto Club under the “Track” section, we see that Joey Logano had the best fast lap rank as well as the second-best average speed rank. We also notice just how good Team Penske was here, with Brad Keselowski also posting amazing numbers. Another driver that really stands out to me in this section is Kyle Busch. He ranked as the best average speed rank with the 7th 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 10-Lap consecutive time, so that is the section we will key in on. Here we see that Alex Bowman posted the best 10-Lap Average, with Joey Logano posting the second-best and Martin Truex Jr. 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 Alex Bowman. Alex was the best driver in Practice 1 and continued to be the best in Practice 2. We also notice Kurt Busch staying consistent in both practices. Finally, we notice how steep a jump Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. 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 “Auto Club Stats” section. This section tells us how drivers have done at Auto Club in their careers. Looking at this section, we notice just how dominant Kyle Busch has been with an average driver rating of 123.5, an average running position of 4.7 and an average of 55 lead laps. We also notice Joey Logano with a very strong history as well: 113.0 average driver rating, an average running position of 5.3 and an average finishing position of 4.3! One driver I’m really taking note of for GPP’s is Kyle Larson. Larson was extremely fast in Practice 1 and really stands out in the Auto Club Stats section as well.
Finally, when we have the drivers we are really focusing on, for example, Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, and Erik Jones, we want to check out the “Projections” section to make sure the projections are popping these guys as well. We see that Busch is projecting very highly, second on the slate. Harvick rates highly as well, but not nearly as high as Truex. This is due to the starting position for Martin Truex this week. Also, Erik Jones rates higher than the drivers around him and will look to have a strong race this weekend. 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 0 – 1 dominators for this race. Therefore, in the DS, I would set a rule under the “Dominator Stacking Options” of “At most 1 players”. We also see this race has a low/medium cash game risk, which is what we want to target.
Top Studs
- Martin Truex Jr. $10,400 (Lock for 20 max)
- Kyle Busch $11,300
- Ryan Blaney $9,400
Top Mid-Tier Plays
- Erik Jones $8,100
- William Byron $8,400
- Austin Dillon $7,400
Top GPP Pivots
- Joey Logano $10,900
- Christopher Bell $7,000
- Kyle Larson $9,600
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!