Hello everyone and welcome to The Sway Bar! My name is Ryan Larkin aka @Larkin8 on Twitter and inside our DFS Army. I will be filling in this week for the normal host of The Sway Bar Gage (AUFan30). He should be back in the next couple of weeks but until then I will give my spin on his killer slate deconstruction format.
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DARLINGTON
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 Darlington Raceway. If we find Darlington Raceway 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 really like to take a look at is Lead Lap %. This will help us decide how many cars are able to finish on the lead lap thus having the best upside. For Darlington, we see that only 42% off the field finishes on the lead lap. This is 6th lowest in the series. For those who can maintain the lead lap they will have a chance at scoring well at the end of the night. This also means that the track is less forgiving to someone the lower end drivers. For instance, Bubba Wallace has been unbelievable on late race restarts this year and has secured a 6th at Vegas and 19th at Phoenix because he was still on the lead lap late. He is roughly a 25th place car most races. At Darlington we are likely to see far less of these drivers with the opportunity to jump up the finishing order late. For me I look at this as taking away some variance. This will help our studs and upper mid tier teams the most and makes me more inclined to get off the lower tier and punt plays
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 Brad Keselowski who has a good history here. When we look at the Avg Pole Laps Led section, we see that this track is at the very top, ranking 1st with an average of only 107 laps led for pole-sitters. Now, part of this is a strong first pit box selection. This week that will actually go to Kevin Harvick for being first in points. Gives BK a little drop and Harvick a little boost.
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 10th for fast laps with an average of 30.7 fast laps.
Track Types Tab
The track types section is fairly straightforward to read and understand. This section tells us what drivers the best tracks are. We already know that Darlington is a 1.3 Mile Steep banked 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 Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, and Martin Truex absolutely crush these types of tracks.
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, Newman, Buescher, and Austin Dillon are noticeably better on these tracks than other ones on the schedule. Let’s take note of these guys as we further our research.
DKAvgByStart Tab
The next tab I always look at is the “FDAvgByStart” tab on the RS. This is located on the bottom tabs when you open the RS. Doing this shows us 2 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 and Mid-Tier. You can also do this for the 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+ Driver Rating Average) section, we see that our Studs starting 1-5 crush here. Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch are going to be my top picks from this section who can get out front early and get those dom points. Next, we see that with the full point place differential that 21-25 range is an amazing area to attack. Erik Jones (Yeah, I know he starts 20th) and Kurt Busch will be our targets from this area of the field.
Taking a look at our “Mid-Tier” (drivers who have a 50-90 Driver Rating Average), we see that Mid-Tier guys starting 36 – 40 score the best with an average of 34.2 FP. Since we don’t have any this week we will look elsewhere. The 16-20 range looks really good for this track. That is where we see William Byron taking off from this week. Also, the 26-30 range is a great area to look at with Christopher Bell and Tyler Reddick starting there.
FDAvgByStart
Taking a look at our “Studs” (drivers who have a 90+ Season Long Driver Rating Average) section, we see that our Studs starting 1 – 5 usually score the highest here, with a 75.4 FP average. I really like Keselowski on the Pole and Kyle Busch starting 4th in this section. We also see that from the 11-15 range they do pretty well too. Truex starting 15th is the perfect guy to target here.
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 top 15 are great. This is the biggest skewed section for us this week, however, as with no qualifying we have numerous drivers starting deeper in the field that will offer better upside. Bell, Reddick, Buescher jump out for this week.
DraftKings/FanDuel Tab
Depending on the site you play you will want to take a massive look at these tabs. Obviously, with no practice we don’t get the normal practice stats but we can look at projections, track history, and comparable intermediate track stats.
The first section I want to look at is the “Darlington Stats” section. This section tells us how drivers have done at Darlington in their careers. Looking at this section, we notice just how good Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin have been here. This is where we can see a driver like Kurt Busch really pops as a good play here.
Finally, when we have the drivers we are really focusing on, for example, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick, and Kurt Busch, we want to check out the “Projections” section to make sure the projections are popping these guys as well. We see that these three drivers rank inside the top 5 for this week
NillyJay’s NASCAR Tools
The final thing we want to do when getting ready to set up the DS is to 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 2-3 dominators on both sites for this race. Therefore, in the DS, I would set a rule under the “Dominator Stacking Options” of “At most 3 players”. We also see this race has a medium cash game risk, which isn’t horrible in NASCAR, but Darlington does have some unpredictability involved with it.
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DraftKings
Top Studs
- Denny Hamlin $11,100
- Brad Keselowski $10,400
- Kyle Busch $11,800
Top Mid-Tier Plays
- Kurt Busch $8,500
- Tyler Reddick $7,200
- Christopher Bell $6,600
Top GPP Pivots
- Kevin Harvick $11,500
- Ryan Blaney $9,500
- Chris Buescher $7,000
FanDuel
Top Studs
- Denny Hamlin $12,500
- Kyle Busch $14,000
- Martin Truex $11,500
Top Mid-Tier Plays
- Kurt Busch $9,400
- Erik Jones $9,800
- Christopher Bell $6,000
Top GPP Pivots
- Kevin Harvick $14,500
- Tyler Reddick $6,600
- William Byron $9,000
That’ll do it for this week’s The Sway Bar! If you enjoyed, please give me a follow on Twitter @Larkin8 and also check out the normal host of this article @AUFan30! Be sure to reach out in our NASCAR slack channels to get up to date info or just follow along with the best DFS sport!!