Following Alex Bowman’s dog winning this past Sunday, the eNASCAR DFS calendar takes us from the superspeedway of Talladega to the high banks of Dover. The first Sunday of May will see 150 laps ran in virtual Delaware in the Finish Line 150.
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Real Life NASCAR News
Before we delve into this week’s eNASCAR DFS slate, let’s talk about some real NASCAR news. Matt Weaver of AutoWeek released a story Tuesday with a new Cup schedule that takes NASCAR into mid-June. Starting Sunday, May 17, the Cup Series will resume racing at Darlington. The following Wednesday, May 20, Darlington will host another race that’s shorter in length. On May 24, the Coke 600 will be held at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Just like Darlington, Charlotte will host a second, shorter Wednesday race. On May 31, Martinsville will hold a race, though length and time have yet to be released.
Fast forward and Bristol gets its first race on June 3, probably an evening race. On June 7, Atlanta holds its annual event and a week later Homestead hosts its race. The one caveat to all these races is there will be zero fans. Furthermore, most of these races will be held with no practice or qualifying either. In an attempt to limit personnel, NASCAR is going to run as few on-track activities as possible.
If you question the locations, it’s about two distinct factors. First, NASCAR had to take advantage of proximity to North Carolina where most teams are based. Both Carolinas have eased up restrictions of late and by May 17, NASCAR truly hopes they can hold a limited personnel event at The Lady in Black. Furthermore, teams had vehicles built for the 550 HP package waiting in the wings. This allows them to use those vehicles.
Are You Using The Projections?
A further side note: if you have been using Alex Baker’s projections, you’re probably swimming in cash by now. Alex has been killing it with his eNASCAR DFS projections. Multiple users won thousands of dollars this past Sunday plugging in his numbers including TheRealCoachS111. Sign up today to get access to these projections plus ownership and slack chat.
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Penalized For Being Good
NASCAR’s decision last week to essentially penalize the top three from Bristol felt odd. However, inverting the top-10 qualifiers was just evidence that NASCAR can’t help themselves when it came to rules quirks. As my father has said multiple times, if NASCAR can find a way to screw up a good thing, they will. However, this is all in the name of keeping one driver from just sitting on the lead the whole race, namely William Byron.
As far as “real life” goes, or as close as it gets in a simulation, the changes worked. All three of Byron, Timmy Hill and Parker Kligerman made their way from the rear to the front. Even better for NASCAR, multiple drivers joined them in that endeavor, including Denny Hamlin. I rostered Hamlin in nearly every lineup, so you can guess how my ROI went after his daughter turned off the monitors.
Regardless, the results were positive enough that NASCAR decided to keep these modifications static for Dover. Thus, race winner Alex Bowman will “provisionally” start in 39th. Runner-up Corey Lajoie will “tentatively” roll off the grid in 40th. Third-place finisher Ryan Preece will join that duo in the rear starting 38th “for now.” I use these caveats because as we saw at Talladega, these starting numbers will change if anyone else misses qualifying.
When drivers fail to connect for qualifying, they get placed in order of their “Irating” from best to worst. Thus, if a fourth driver fails to qualify with the aforementioned trio, they will get assigned their starting number according to that iRacing metric.
Implications for FanDuel eNASCAR DFS
For the first time, I’m going to say you need to see how qualifying shakes out. Yes, it’s a firm possibility that Byron will inherit the lead at some point. However, what’s not known is if he will start on the pole thanks to the top 10 getting flipped. Thus, my mid-week stance is to play whoever the eventual pole sitter is plus Byron.
Dover should play out fairly comparable to Bristol because of the similarities in racing styles due to the high banking and track length. Thus, whoever starts P1 should make off like Preece did at Bristol and march out to a commanding lead. It feels inevitable for Byron to track them down at some point and take the lead. The only snag in this plan is if FanDuel prices up Byron so much that attaching him to any other possible “dominator” becomes out of the question. Making value on a $16,000 salary is tough but it will be easier to achieve than last week at Talladega. Dominator points will be front and center, unlike last week where we focused on finishing position.
Should Byron start P1, then utilizing a single dominator approach makes sense though. He very well could lead two-thirds or more of the laps.
Beyond your lap leader, the rest of your roster will be a matter of how many drivers can you fit in with the highest likelihood to finish in the top five or top 10? Last week showed us several of these punt plays can hang with the rest of the regulars. Double punting to fit in Byron plus a couple of $10,000 drivers may not be the craziest idea.
Post Salary Release Update for Fanduel
There’s nothing strategy-wise we need to rehash but there is this banner on the lineups page:
“Live scoring will not be available for this race, all official stats will be added upon race completion. In addition, drivers will now be scored -0.1 fantasy points for each incident they are involved in during the race, including contact with other cars, barriers, or driving off-track.”
So, do you attempt to adjust your projections for “incidents”? Yes but that seems like an amazing way to waste time. Realize, at a track like Dover everybody will knock around into someone else. Who does it more is just going to be a product of where drivers are in the field. Plus, it’s just -.1 points for these incidents. Fanduel needed a way to keep tie-breakers from happening. Oddly they landed on this. You can’t predict it, just know they will occur.
Implications for DraftKings eNASCAR DFS
As long as NASCAR continues to use this starting lineup format, roster construction on DraftKings will be cut and dry. Lock in the top three from the week prior and wait with bated breath to see how qualifying shakes down. We have no clue what salaries look like yet, but setting Bowman, Preece and Lajoie in your lineup will give you an amazing floor and probably not cost too much either. Spitballing, I would venture to say we’re talking about $24,800 or so of your total cap space. Add on $11,000-plus Byron and you’ll have plenty of cap to fit in our pole sitter should you go that route.
If you’re worried about duplicate lineups, don’t forget to just utilize last week’s strategy. If you swapped out of Kligerman for Preece, you were probably sweating that decision early especially when Kligerman found the lead. However, Parker faded into the teens and Preece finished third. A 13-point difference in place differential alone. Thus, I think you’re going to have to figure out if you want to go lower on Bowman, who should see higher ownership thanks to recency bias, or Preece, who has better numbers during the eNASCAR racing stretch. Both should see similar salaries, but DraftKings may decide to artificially increase both thanks to knowing the duo will start in the rear.
Saturday Morning Draftkings Update
With these Pro Invitational Races comes delayed pricing and contests releasing on Draftkings. It appears they’ve taken the keyboard away from the chimpanzee and actually let someone with an algorithm actually create reasonable salaries.
With that, Draftkings has done all of us a favor and priced up the trio starting in the back. I wondered if Draftkings would bake their place 
differential into their salaries. By George, they did! Bowman and Preece received significant bumps and Lajoie received an insane bump. Instead of the projected $24-25000 I was expecting, these three take up $29,200 of your $50,000 salary cap!
Can you still build a functioning lineup? Of course, however, there is still one small problem. If you attempt to lock in this trio as well as William Byron ($13,000) you end up with an impossible lineup. As in, not enough salary cap. Even if you played the two cheapest drivers. Thus, you’re going to need to decide do Byron, Hill, Smithley, Hamlin, etc… score enough dominator points to outscore either Bowman or Preece via their place differential? Consequently, if they do, does their fantasy output create better values than Bowman and Preece who are both above the $10K threshold?
Making the Math Work
In reality, the math is simple. Bowman and Preece each have 30+ place differential potential, assuming they finish top-five. For example, let’s say Bowman starts 37th and finishes 5th. Take his 32 place differential points plus a 5th place finish and he ends with 71 Draftkings points. That’s with no laps led or fastest laps either. An easy assumption after starting in the back and fighting the crowd to get up front. Now, we take Denny Hamlin and give him a 3rd place finish after starting 7th. That alone gives him 44 Draftkings points. In order to equal Bowman’s 71 fantasy points, Denny would need to lead around 100+ laps plus catch a few fastest laps in the process. Doable but I know which scenario is easier and more likely to happen.
The real question is can $13000 William Byron make value? If 7X is the standard of which we’re judging the high priced drivers against one another then we consequently need 90~ DK points from Will. It sounds tough but Byron scored 116 Draftkings points at Bristol and 94 at Richmond. In both scenarios, Byron led 84 and 80 laps, something he could easily do tomorrow at Dover. Byron has been killing it in these practice races with three early week wins plus a second. With the impending inversion its a guarantee that Byron won’t start on the pole, save for him playing 5-dimensional chess as he attempts to run fast but not too fast. I’ll just bet he starts 9th or 10th, races forward to the lead, and leads half or more of the race once again. That for sure gets him 80+ DK points.
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