NASCAR Calming the Chaos 6/21/20 – Talladega

Hello again Army, and welcome to this week’s Calming the Chaos!  We’re back to superspeedway racing this week, and if you’re one of those that are newer to NASCAR this year, you’re about to see one of the extreme ends of what this sport has to offer.

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.

Please note: I went on a bit more than usual here, but I did this more for the newer people who haven’t experienced one of these races yet.  If you don’t like reading, you can’t say you weren’t warned!

Talladega Superspeedway

If you’re new and still learning NASCAR DFS, get ready for a whole new ballgame.  Not only do we get some of the fewest laps of any race (188), which in itself would change how we approach dominators, but this is one of the races where we expect to see a bunch of cars wreck, which completely changes how we look at certain drivers.

In other words, set aside everything you’ve learned so far, and be prepared to feel a little uncomfortable with some sketchy looking lineups, because they are the kind of lineups that thrive here.

Before we dig in, I would like to say that I do not recommend playing cash games here.  Yes, some people do, but logically thinking, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  In a nutshell, we play cash games to slowly grind our bankrolls and/or as a safety net for our GPP lineups.  We try to play them as safely as possible because we’re looking for consistency, but if we expect to see up to half of the field (or more) to crash, how can we put together a lineup we can rely on?

If you’re seasoned and have a method that works for you here, then more power to you.  But if you’re newer, I highly recommend skipping the cash games this week and just focus on GPP instead.  Also, I would strongly encourage people to favor quantity over quality this week (aka hammer MME and save SE for another race, paying down in entry fees if it means you can get significantly more entries).  With that out of the way, let’s discuss how the nature of this race will play into how we build lineups.

At most other races, drivers will start close together but after a few laps they’ll start to form a single line and spread out as the laps go by.  Driver skill and/or equipment quality take over, and we’ll see certain drivers do better or worse depending mostly on these factors.  While still ultimately unpredictable, we do have a far better chance of predicting the outcomes of most drivers at those races.

That is not the case here!  Instead, the cars (engines) are restricted, which raises the bar for the smaller guys and puts drivers nose-to-bumper with the field for nearly the entire race.  Add in the fact that this is a very fast track (it is a superspeedway after all), and you can see that any false moves could send multiple cars home at a moment’s notice.  When this happens (and it will, probably several times), we have no way of knowing who may or may not be impacted by the proceeding wreck.  Will somebody lose a tire on lap 25, resulting in the bottom half of the field getting wiped out?  Maybe.  Will somebody try to make a pass at the wrong time, taking out a chunk of cars up front?  It’s happened plenty of times before.  Will somebody have a mental slip at the same moment somebody else is coming up/down on them from drafting?  Possibly!

Point is, these races are predictably unpredictable…so be sure you’re keeping that in mind as you build lineups!

Harnessing chaos is the name of the game

At a normal race, we typically select our dominators and fill in the rest with a combination of strong finishing positions and/or place differential.  Typically, we have to pay up, to some degree, for drivers that are more likely to finish closer to the front, and we take the place differential as a bonus whenever we can get it (or sometimes we target the place differential first).  Sometimes we get both (aka the hybrids), but more often than not, we’re paying up for them.  We don’t load up on a bunch of cheap drivers starting at the back because we know they aren’t really going anywhere.

But what happens if those cheap drivers could go somewhere?  What if the cheapest drivers had a much higher chance of moving up and finishing far higher than they ever could at any other track?  What if they were the ones who offered some of the highest ceilings on the slate, and we could pay down for a higher ceiling?

Well, that’s exactly what we get here.  When we start to have big wrecks (and believe me, they will come), we get a lot of drivers out, which artificially bumps up the cheap punts.  Every wreck is a handful more positions given to them, and with enough of them, you start to see drivers who have no business finishing outside of the bottom-30 knocking on the door of a top-20, top-15, or even a top-10 finish.  Add in the fact that they tend to stay on the lead lap (or just 1-2 laps down), and you get a scenario where they wind up putting up massive scores, especially for the price…and that’s exactly what we’re banking on.

So what can we take from that to use for lineup construction?  For starters, salary is not overly important here, within reason.  You won’t need to take the absolute cheapest drivers on the slate, but leaving upwards of about $10,000 (going by DraftKings pricing) is not out of the question here.  There have been times where the winning lineup here spent almost all of the available salary, but more often than not, leaving a sizable chunk on the table wins the day.

Secondly, due to physics, fast laps are generally spread out at these races, rather than a bulk of them going to a handful of drivers.  If you like to pay up for a stud because they get you fast laps (even without lead laps), you can skip that here.

Finally, dominators….or in this case, dominator.  Since the bulk of our ceiling will come from drivers starting closer to the back, we have to be very picky about who we choose to lead laps…if we take anybody at all.  A lot of the time, we’ll see multiple lead changes throughout the race, sometimes on every other lap, so we don’t have to take a dominator if we don’t want to.  If you do, I would avoid stacking two of them if at all possible, though you could run a few lineups like that to be different.

The Field

Okay!  Now that you’ve digested that, it’s time to apply it to the drivers.  Generally speaking, for most drivers, I don’t look at them for their specific talents.  For example, we know Truex is always in play at 1.5-mile tracks, so he stands out above other high-dollar drivers.  There are exceptions (I’ll get to them), but for the most part, I look at drivers as a bunch of names to pull out of a hat.

So how can we possibly use that to our advantage?  Well, it’s easy, and it’s the most important thing I’ll say in this entire article:

We are not trying to predict who will or will not survive the chaos.  Rather, we’re trying to put ourselves into position to take advantage of a driver’s good/bad fortune in regards to said chaos.  This is the art of strategically throwing darts.

In other words, for the most part, don’t scroll through the list of drivers trying to predict which ones are going to move up on their own (again, there are exceptions, so bare with me) or who will survive the chaos or who will wreck.  That’s impossible (unless you have a crystal ball, and if you do, you should be aiming higher than the prizes we have in DFS).

Rather, I want you to look at the drivers for their potential upside and for how popular they might be.  For most drivers, there’s a linear line for their ceiling, and the deeper in the field they start, the higher their ceiling is going to be.  That also means they are more likely to be more popular, so you can consider fading some of them for ownership leverage.

As a general rule of thumb:

Dominators starting in the top-10 – they will require leading a large chunk of laps and finishing in the top-5.

All drivers starting in the top-20 – they will generally require leading a small chunk of laps and finishing in the top-10 or so (they can be mixed with a dominator to help make your lineups different), or if they can grab a top-5 finish they could still be in the winning lineup without leading laps.

All other drivers starting around 25th on back – they need only to survive the race, and the closer to the back of the field they start, the higher their potential ceiling is going to be.  Depending on where they start, they can be in the winning lineup by finishing anywhere from top-10 to top-25.  Salary is irrelevant for this group!  Don’t group these drivers by salary, group them by starting position and/or natural talent at this track.

Now, with everything out of the way, I’d like to go over some drivers (finally, I know).  However, due to the nature of this race, I’m not going to go over most of them.  Remember, most drivers are just potential upside here, and they’re at the mercy of the chaos/randomness that comes with Talladega.  With that in mind, I just want to touch base on those who have an edge over other drivers, everything else being equal.

Dominators

Starting on the pole gives Truex a good shot at leading early, so he’s an option here, though he’s certainly not a favorite.  I’m not overly confident in his ability to hold the lead long enough to really pay off, so while he is in play, don’t go overboard here.

On the other hand, the Penske drivers (Keselowski, Logano, and Blaney) are always strong at these tracks, and if they can work their way up front, they could just as easily lead 100+ laps here.  They are my favorite dominator options, and I like them roughly in that same order.  I don’t mind stacking two of them, but I would probably favor using Keselowski first in any of those lineups.  Otherwise, they all make solid solo dominator options, and I wouldn’t play DFS here without a healthy amount of exposure to them.

After that, I don’t mind Elliott, but beyond these five, it’s a crap shoot as to who might lead laps.  You can sprinkle the others around (Kyle Busch, Harvick, Hamlin, etc), but I would look at these other five first (and favor Penske).

Studs / value studs

I know he likes to blow up the field, but Stenhouse is very good at these tracks, and he could see a top-5 finish or even compete for the win.  Another strong option, who is even cheaper, is Austin Dillon.  He’s also very good and could put himself into the top-10 without relying on a bunch of wrecks to get him there.  I’d have to put Reddick up here too, as he’s just been on fire this year, and I don’t see him slowing down any here.  Almirola deserves a mention here too, as his strong resume is well above most in his price range.  These four are particularly strong on FanDuel, but could certainly be in the winning lineup on DraftKings too, so don’t overlook them.

After that, you can load up on the drivers on the good side of the sliding scale… Bell, Ty Dillon, Gaughan, and Suarez are all starting in the 30s and offer a lot of upside if they can hang on until the end (Ty is probably my favorite of the bunch).  They’ll be popular, so consider the pivots too (DiBenedetto, Byron, Wallace, Jones, etc).

Value / punts

He’s not starting super deep in the field (which is probably a good thing), but I really like McDowell here.  He shouldn’t stand out starting 25th, but like Stenhouse/Austin, he could naturally drive his way into the top-10.  He’s a great target to invest in.

After that, well…everybody else is in play here, and like I’ve mentioned, the deeper they start, the higher their ceiling (and likely ownership) will be.  This group will be the bulk of a lineup’s ceiling, so get plenty of exposure here.  This includes punts like Gauding all the way up to LaJoie, and guys like Custer/Preece along the way.  Hammer them!

The best thing you can do for yourself is to get creative with lineup building, and using the dominator stacking feature is a great way to do that.  It’s not a bad idea to give these drivers (and some from the previous section) all a “Y” there and force the Domination Station to give you 1, 2, or even up to 3 of them in every lineup.  If you hear chatter in the industry about some of these drivers being more popular than others, consider fading them to gain some leverage on the field.

Closing thoughts

I know this was a bit more in depth than other articles I’ve done lately, but I hope this helps some of you as you learn a new sport.  Remember, if you look at a lineup and you feel uncomfortable about it, that’s usually a good thing here.  Good luck, and I’ll see you all in Slack!