Following Martin Truex Jr.‘s victory at Phoenix, NASCAR heads back east to Atlanta. Racing returns to the jagged asphalt of Atlanta Motor Speedway, for the first of two events in 2021, with the Folds of Honor 500 Presented by Quiktrip. Therefore, let’s recap last week’s race and preview this Sunday’s event for NASCAR DFS picks on DraftKings and FanDuel.
Folds of Honor 500 Preview for DraftKings & FanDuel
Joe Gibbs Gets His Second Victory of 2021
Through just five races, in the 2021 season, Joe Gibbs Racing already has its second victory. Now JGR stands died with Hendrick Motorsports for most wins in the Cup Series at two apiece. The Phoenix win was a bit of a surprise, especially to me, considering how the Joe Gibbs stable fared at short-flat venues in 2020. Yes, there were high expectations for Denny Hamlin and they were realized by Hamlin as he took the lead early from Brad Keselowski. However, after that initial run by Hamlin and yellow flag for the competition caution, Hamlin never ascended back to the lead.
Perhaps, there should have been some optimism for race winner Truex. Yet based on his recent numbers at Phoenix, I couldn’t find a case for Truex. Sure, he won the first Martinsville event last June. However, it took him until the halfway point of the race to finally get to the lead. Plus, that was a Wednesday night affair and the race got off to a very wonky start with several contenders losing a lap before the 100-lap mark of the race.
Regardless, three of the four Gibbs drivers (sans Kyle Busch) started in the top 10 and managed to finish there. When the Series heads back to Martinsville, following the Easter break, JGR will deserve as much attention as Penske Motorsports.
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Back to Atlanta Motor Speedway
As previously mentioned, NASCAR leaves the West and returns to racing on the Eastern seaboard. This week the Series goes back to the 550-horsepower package for 327 laps around Atlanta. When you think about Atlanta, one defining feature should come to mind — its abrasive surface. It’s this hard, tire-consuming surface that makes racing at Atlanta so unique. If a driver does not, or won’t attempt to, match their driving style with Atlanta’s coarse exterior — they will fail.
Atlanta, along with Charlotte, was one of the predecessors of the intermediate ovals we all know and love. Originally, Atlanta started off its life as a true oval. However, in 1997 the track was redesigned from turns four to one, along the front stretch, to look more like a d-shaped oval. In fact, that 1997 remodel was the last time Atlanta has seen its surface repaved. It’s been nearly a quarter-century since new asphalt was put down on the surface of Atlanta. No wonder this track will absolutely consume tires throughout a race.
Before you start getting mad at Atlanta for failing to lay down fresh asphalt, put your stones back in your pocket. It’s not like Atlanta officials haven’t been trying to get this done. Multiple times Speedway Motorsports Inc has tried to “update” the surface. However, one very noisy and influential group keeps asking them to delay the repaving effort… the drivers!
Atlanta — An Acquired Skill
Atlanta’s abrasive asphalt produces the worst tire falloff we will see in NASCAR all year. By falloff I mean, how much speed a driver loses compared to where they started with fresh tires. If a driver gets too aggressive, they can accelerate this falloff and affect their speed negatively in a long run. How a driver does can really depend on how they manage their tires, how hard they get into the brakes, into the gas, or vice-versa.
As you look through the Race Sheets, you can see that some drivers have gotten good and these skills. For example, Keselowski and Kevin Harvick have continually been factors at Atlanta over the past decade. Tire maintenance has become so much of an acquired skill for these two, their finishes bear out just how much better they’ve been at maintaining speed, while also maintaining their tires in the process. Veteran drivers Truex and Kyle Larson under the radar, have also developed this skill in past years too.
In fact, this balancing act is generally something that comes with experience. In hindsight, it’s probably why we shouldn’t have been surprised that A.J. Allmendinger won last year’s Xfinity race at Atlanta. If you don’t know how to take care of your equipment, a driver will suffer the consequences either through a suppressed finish or a cut-down tire altogether.
Searching for a Corollary
We have plenty of past Atlanta data to scroll through and we’ll get to that in a bit. However, when looking for other tracks to compare Atlanta against, as per driver expectations, we have a few tracks. Yet our issue in 2021 is that two of these venues are not on our radar. Auto Club Speedway was taken completely off the schedule as it’s undergoing a transformation from a two-mile-long superspeedway into a short track. Plus, COVID-related restrictions removed the idea of racing at Auto Club altogether. An issue we’re still watching in the hope that the Series gets to return to Sonoma for road racing in the Napa Valley.
Next, we would look to past races at Chicagoland. However, we lost that race last season due to outside gathering restrictions that made it impossible for racing in Illinois. Furthermore, our annual trip to Chicagoland was removed altogether for 2021. In fact, don’t be surprised if we either (a) never return back to this track as the land is repurposed or (b) this track evolves into something else like Auto Club.
With all things considered, we really only have one venue left to compare Atlanta to and that’s Homestead. Thankfully, for us, we just saw 400 miles worth of racing at Homestead two weeks ago. Although not to the same degree in how rough the track is, Homestead is another intermediate oval that makes drivers balance driving style with tire consumption.
In the Super Sheet on the main page of the Race Sheets, I have a side-by-side comparison of Atlanta stats with high tire wear races in 2020-2021. If you’d like to dig into numbers from this year in the 550-horsepower package to compare Homestead to Las Vegas, you can find that data here. Needless to say, two races do not provide that much information but with just five total races into this season, we’re all working with a reduced data set.
NASCAR DFS Optimal Lineup Construction
While driver’s histories are going to matter a ton this Sunday, the main thing you should be focused on is the 327 laps and that impact on how you build DFS lineups. We’re taking a minute step up from the number of laps we saw last Sunday at Phoenix. Lineup construction should be fairly static as dominator points are going to be roughly the same.
Last year’s Atlanta race bears this out as both optimal lineups on DraftKings and FanDuel were two-dominator based.
| Player Name | Start | Finish | Score | Salary | Player Name | Start | Finish | Score | Salary | |
| Kevin Harvick | 9 | 1 | 111.25 | 11700 | Kevin Harvick | 9 | 1 | 94.6 | 14000 | |
| Martin Truex | 11 | 3 | 91.75 | 9600 | Martin Truex | 11 | 3 | 81 | 12200 | |
| Ryan Blaney | 7 | 4 | 54 | 8500 | Ryan Blaney | 7 | 4 | 71.2 | 10500 | |
| Ricky Stenhouse | 22 | 13 | 41.5 | 7600 | Ricky Stenhouse | 22 | 13 | 64.9 | 6600 | |
| Austin Dillon | 16 | 11 | 39 | 6400 | Cole Custer | 31 | 19 | 60.4 | 5500 | |
| Cole Custer | 31 | 19 | 37.5 | 6100 | ||||||
| DraftKings | 375 | $49,900 | FanDuel | 372.1 | $48,800 |
Atlanta-2020 became a rare scenario that if you built a lineup on one site and used that exact same method on the other site, with those exact same players, you managed to go optimal on both places. Both DraftKings and FanDuel optimal lineups were based on two main dominators, Harvick and Truex. These two combined to lead over 200 laps coinciding with a trend we’ve seen at Atlanta the past three seasons. While we generally have multiple drivers lead at least 10% or more of the race, our top two lap leaders combine for over 200 laps led. The majority of that though is coming from our top lap leader who hasn’t gone under the 116 mark since 2013.
The rest of the lineups, on either DraftKings or FanDuel, is based around place differential drivers with either top-15 finishes or Cole Custer who picked up twelve positions at a near punt price. To close out, let’s look at Ryan Blaney who became an optimal DFS play. On FanDuel, he netted you only 0.2 additional laps led points. However, his fourth-place finish is ultimately what made him valuable. On FanDuel, sometimes a driver doesn’t need to be a dominator. They just need to finish high up enough on the board as Blaney did, even at $10,500.
As per DraftKings, Blaney was optimal because of the 20 fastest laps. 54 DraftKings points isn’t a tremendous score in a 327 lap event. Yet when our top two dominators hog so many fastest and laps led points, it leads to Blaney’s score being the fourth-highest total on the day. When you factor in Blaney’s salary, it made the threshold for Blaney becoming optimal that much easier too.
This is the conundrum I believe we will find ourselves in once salaries, and the starting grid are released. For sure, we will need at minimum two dominators. However, is there a third driver that can offer us fantasy points similar to the third dominator yet can do it at a cheaper salary via fewer dominator points, place differential, and a top-five or 10 finish?
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