Welcome everyone to the Complete NASCAR DFS Preview for DraftKings and FanDuel: For this edition, we will take a quick look at the upcoming Cup race at Sonoma and Xfinity Series race at Mid Ohio. This article is brought to you by DFSArmy.com and written by Ryan Larkin. You can catch up with Ryan on Twitter or in the DFSA VIP slack @Larkin8
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Jun 23, 2019; Sonoma, CA, USA; Cars line up in the pit before the Toyota / Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway. Mandatory Credit: Stan Szeto-USA TODAY Sports
Sonoma Raceway
The Cup Series returns to Sonoma this week after a one year Covid-related hiatus. This race will be the second to utilize the carousel layout of the track but it will be the first time that they will use the lower downforce version of the 750 HP package. Back in 2019, Gibbs (JGR) smashed here as a result of their massive advantage with the 750 HP high downforce package. Hopefully, teams will have better luck making passes this time around. Due to the layoff and package changes, I will not take too much away from that race in 2019 and will instead look at recent road course history over the past year or so. There will be no practice or qualifying for this race so the starting lineup will be based on the super awesome formula!
Quick Race Facts
Cup Series
Date: June 6th
Race: Sunday 4:00 pm ET.
Laps: 90
Stages: 20/40/90
Cup Series DFS Outlook
With only 90 laps this is one of the shortest races of the year. This means dominator points are less important than normal. You don’t have the ability to greatly separate a lineup as you could with Larson last week. In these types of races, I look to play 1 dominator (who should finish top 3) plus 1 stud. On both sites, we will really focus on big-time place differential plays. Positive position differential can be as important as leading the race so be sure to take advantage of any elite drivers starting deep in the field. A driver like Kurt Busch who had issues last race but has top 10 upside is a fantastic option. For this race there isn’t as much overall strategy outside of looking at past road course results and trying to get as many to tier drivers as possible.
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Mid Ohio Sports Car Course
The Xfinity Series is back road racing as well this week as the series heads to Mid Ohio. Mid Ohio runs 2.258 miles in length and offers 13 corners. Due to the size of the track, there are very few laps but this remains one of the longest races in terms of actual race time. We usually see a lot of individual incidents that don’t bring out a caution plus a few bigger issues that do create full-course cautions. Staying clean and avoiding incidents is a massive part of this race especially on restarts. Strategy will play a fairly significant part in terms of shaking up the running order during the stages. Long run speed is very important as well as there is a lot of tire fall off.
Xfinity Series
Date: June 5th
Race: Saturday 1:00 pm ET.
Laps: 75
Stages: 25/50/75
Xfinity Series DFS Outlook
Lineup building for this race will be very much like I mentioned above for the Cup race. We will look to play the one main dominator/winner. This is likely to be Austin Cindric. You will want to get some lineups without him but if all goes well he should dominate early and be there for the win late. Much like in the Cup race with Truex Jr., AJ Allmendinger is an elite road racer starting outside the top 10 that offers good place differential potential plus race-winning upside. We also have numerous great place differential plays to fill lineups out with. Depending on pricing I could definitely see a situation where we are leaving a decent amount of salary on the table. I expect a chalky race for DFS so it will be important to differentiate yourself from the pack by finding low-owned plays. From my own past experience, I was cashing 90% of my lineups in a race here in either 2018 or 2019 with about 5 laps to go. At that time Justin Marks and one other driver had an issue on a late restart and I went from cashing 90% to cashing 10%. I ended up profiting $30 due to this though as the two drivers were massively owned.
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This will conclude this edition of our NASCAR Preview. If you would like to reach out and talk NASCAR Follow me on Twitter @Larkin8 or of course Become a VIP member and join me as well as our other DFS Army NASCAR contributors (Brady Miller and Taco) in the NASCAR coaching channels.