NASCAR DFS Picks for Folds of Honor 500 on DraftKings + FanDuel 3/18

The field is set for Sunday’s race at Atlanta with Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. on the front row. Let’s jump into this week’s top NASCAR DFS picks on DraftKings and FanDuel for the Folds of Honor 500.

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Folds of Honor 500 NASCAR DFS Picks

Denny Hamlin, 1st ($11,700 FanDuel, $10,000 DraftKings)

Martin Truex Jr., 2nd ($13,500 FanDuel, $9,600 DraftKings)

One of these two is going to be your early dominator. I think it will boil down to whether Hamlin opts for a push from Joey Logano or Brad Keselowski. Considering Hamlin will get the preferred lane, I would side with Hamlin to lead until the competition caution. However, what will happen after that is anyone’s guess.

Hamlin has been good at Atlanta over his career and has a win here, but we have to go nine races ago to find that victory. In the short term, Hamlin has gone fifth, 11th and fourth since 2018, and his average running position is 7.4. However, his fastest laps and laps-led averages both are in the single digits. Combining this with underwhelming numbers from the pole sitter since 2018 has me a bit wary of rostering Hamlin as a core play.

Truex, on the other hand, has been a consistent factor at Atlanta dating back to his time at Michael Waltrip Racing. Since 2012, Truex has only one finish worse than eighth at Atlanta: 23rd back in 2014 in his first year at Furniture Row. He should be another strong bet for a top-five finish; the only question is, what are his lap leading probabilities? Truex’s history at Atlanta is pretty sporadic, per his laps-led totals. However, it has been 12 years since we have seen Truex on the front row here. He has clean air, momentum (both in this package and in season) and just has to beat Denny Hamlin. As such, I prefer Truex heads up.

Kyle Larson, 6th ($12,500 FanDuel, $10,400 DraftKings)

When I first started compiling research for Sunday’s race, I had to compile everything about Larson in a tweet.

Kyle Larson
– +650 (3rd best odds)
– led the most laps 2 years ago at Atlanta
– Has shown a knack for running well at high tire wear tracks (Homestead, Auto Club, Chicagoland)
– 4th and 1st in the 550 HP package thus far.

— Race Sheets (@RaceSheetsDFS) March 16, 2021

Everything is lining up for Larson to be one of our top dominators this Sunday. DraftKings Sportsbook loves him and gives him the third-best outright odds. It was just two years ago that Larson started seventh, ascended to the lead and led 142 laps while also knocking down 54 fastest laps. When I think of what Larson was good at in the No. 42, it was at other high tire wear tracks like Homestead, Auto Club and Chicagoland. Furthermore, we have seen him practically run away with one race already in this package (Las Vegas) and finish fourth in the other.

Kevin Harvick, 7th ($14,000 FanDuel, $11,000 DraftKings)

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. So who wants to go a third time around with Harvick?

This Sunday is going to be the ultimate litmus test of where Harvick and this No. 4 team are. We expected Harvick to be a factor at Homestead, which he was before the competition caution. Yet his fifth-place finish that day still feels like a letdown. He and the entire Stewart-Haas Racing team ran poorly at Las Vegas. Last week at Phoenix was supposed to be a rebound for a driver who had won there nine times prior. However, Harvick’s struggles in the 750-horsepower package were well documented going back to last season.

Now we get Harvick returning to his bread and butter: Atlanta. Harvick has won two of the last three Atlanta races, averaging 125.7 laps led over the past three seasons. In high-tire-wear races dating back to Darlington-1, Harvick has won three of six races, with just one race not resulting in a top-five finish. This should be a race where we put Harvick in our lineups with a big black permanent marker. Yet the fear is that Harvick and the No. 4 team are trash.

My stance is I’m playing him. There is absolutely nothing about this race — especially the weather conditions they’re expecting Sunday — that should be any different for Harvick compared to past seasons. Race4ThePrize pointed out to me earlier this week, if the track is cool, then Harvick can run that bottom groove. That’s where he does his damage.

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Kyle Busch, 19th ($10,700 FanDuel/DraftKings)

Get last week out of your mind. This is a different racing package and a different track. This week our focus is back on the 550-horsepower package. Despite Busch’s woes last season, he did manage to finish second. Furthermore, the last three times we have seen Busch in this package have resulted in a win, a 10th and a third.

While starting position is not the be-all end-all it was for last week, it still matters in this package as per who dominates. Considering this, not to mention his sub-par lap-leading history in the Generation-Six car at Atlanta, I can’t consider Busch a legitimate threat to lead laps. However, that 19th starting position does help offset those need for dominator points via his place-differential upside.

Cole Custer, 27th ($7,000 FanDuel, $7.600 DraftKings)

Sometimes, if it weren’t for bad luck, some drivers would have no luck at all. In two of the last three weeks, Custer’s finish has not mirrored how he has run. At Homestead he cut down a tire late in the race. At Las Vegas it looked like the entire SHR team all ran the same bad setup. Last week Custer was well on his way to a top-20 finish before he tried to scoot up in front of Bubba Wallace, got turned into the wall and went three laps down on pit road.

Truth be told, the streak may continue this week at Atlanta, as Custer hasn’t done that well at high-tire-wear venues since his rookie season. However, last year’s Atlanta race was one of his better finishes in these types of races: 19th. I have Custer listed as a cash play due to his starting position, but I am not high on him for tournaments.

Ryan Newman, 28th ($6,000 FanDuel, $7,100 DraftKings)

At a track like Atlanta, sometimes you just want something dependable. As in, when given the choice between Driver A and Driver B, give me the one that should manage his tires and hopefully stay on the lead lap. Newman knows exactly what he needs to do to manage his tire fall off. Despite what you may think of Newman now, in Roush equipment he’s been pretty steady at Atlanta, with finishes of 14th and 13th.

Dating back to our first Darlington race of 2020, Newman’s average finish in these six high-tire-wear races has been 15.8, while his average running position has been 17.7. This is all to say that Newman still hasn’t lost the knack for how to manage his equipment at a track that demands that capability. When you combine this with his starting position, it makes him one of the safer bets on the board.

[MARCHMADNESS]

Tyler Reddick, 29th ($7,500 FanDuel, $8,400 DraftKings)

An aggressive driver at a tire-consuming track sounds like a DNF waiting to happen. However, Reddick ran surprisingly well at these races that demand drivers take care of their equipment. In our six-race dataset, Reddick had an average finish of 10.8 — tied for ninth among everyone in Sunday’s field. Those finishes included two top-fives, both of those coming at Homestead. While Reddick won’t be riding the wall Sunday, as he has at Homestead, he still appears to be a good bet to pick up 10 to 15 spots.

Austin Cindric, 39th ($6,200 FanDuel, $8,600 DraftKings)

Why Cindric is making a spot start here for Penske in the No. 33 I don’t really get. Perhaps he just really likes Atlanta, or Penske realized that they could easily get Cindric into the starting grid since the early entrant list was less than 40 drivers. Regardless, we get a driver starting dead last in a Penske-powered vehicle. That sounds like a good deal to me, especially on FanDuel, at just $6,200.

However, Cindric got the same treatment that DraftKings has given Aric Almirola and Matt DiBenedetto the past few weeks. Reasonable drivers in reasonable equipment get bumped up past $8,500, even those making their second career Cup start like Cindric is. With this salary in mind, we have to question what Cindric’s ceiling is and if that will be a valuable roster choice at $8,600. My initial projection is giving Cindric a 24th-place finish. With no fastest laps or laps-led points baked into the equation, Cindric is looking at around 33 DraftKings points. Barely getting 4x value from Cindric is going to be tough to stomach — especially for tournaments.

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Author

Phillip Bennetzen

Phill Bennetzen is the creator of the RaceSheets; all-inclusive stats and data NASCAR DFS spreadsheets for the Trucks, Xfinity, and Cup Series. Phill and the RaceSheets can be found at racesheetsdfs.substack.com