Following Kyle Larson‘s victory at Las Vegas, NASCAR heads south to Arizona. The final leg of NASCAR’s jaunt out west concludes at Phoenix International Raceway with the Instacart 500. Let’s jump into this week’s NASCAR DFS preview and highlight the information you need to know heading into this weekend for your lineups for the Instacart 500 on DraftKings and FanDuel.
Larson’s Victory
For years we saw Larson figuratively spin his wheels in the No. 42 for Chip Ganassi. Although he had six career victories in that vehicle, there was always this underlying sense that we weren’t seeing the true potential of Larson. Now just four races into this 2021 season, Larson already has his first victory as a driver for Rick Hendrick. Larson finally has a top-tier vehicle to match his talent, and he looks to be a championship contender. We knew a win was in Larson’s forecast for 2021, just not two races into the 550-horsepower package.
Furthermore, the simple swap of veteran Jimmie Johnson for Larson has seemingly breathed new life into this team. This team is young, every driver has a win within the last calendar year, and the driver in No. 9 is the reigning champion. After some down years, Hendrick has made strides to be the top team in the NASCAR Cup Series.
What’s Up With SHR?
This would be the transition point where you would expect me to start piling on about how bad Stewart-Haas Racing has been in contrast to Hendrick. Just four races into the new season, two of those events don’t exactly correlate to how I’ll feel about the season as a whole. Yes, it was horribly disappointing to see none of this four-car outfit finish higher than 20th. However, what did we just witness the week prior at Homestead? Cole Custer was running in the top five at the end of the race before he shredded a tire. Chase Briscoe went two laps down early and had to fight the entire race to get those back. Aric Almirola was in the top 20 for most of the day before he slid into Ryan Blaney. Finally, Kevin Harvick had a strong car early in the race, faded a bit, and then fought forward before finishing fifth. Fast forward a weekend, no one finishes higher than Harvick in 20th, and NASCAR is losing its mind.
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My supposition is that Harvick’s lack of lap leading is what’s alarming people. Ever since the start of the playoffs at Darlington last season, Harvick has not been a strong dominator compared to what we witnessed earlier. In fact, he is only averaging around 20 laps led and 20 fastest laps per race, giving him a measly 44 DraftKings points since Darlington.
The answer given for this lack of dominator points is missed setups. If that’s the case, then Rodney Childers (Harvick’s crew chief) has been missing setups for a while now. Perhaps the problem is that whatever advantage the No. 4 team had post COVID-19 break, it’s gone because the rest of the top-tier contending teams have caught up. The equipment and the driver are still good enough to eke out top-10 finishes. However, any hope for Harvick as a lap leader might be out the window.
With the retirement of Clint Bowyer, SHR has lost a lot of wisdom and experience, and it may be hindering this team as a whole. Regardless, let’s see how SHR adjusts this weekend at Phoenix International Raceway with our return to the 750-horsepower package. The hand wringing probably needs to wait at least one more week.
Back to Phoenix International Raceway
Sunday sees NASCAR return back to the scene of the 2021 championship race: Phoenix International Raceway. In that race, the majority of us got scared by Chase Elliott failing technical inspection, only to watch him race forward, lead the most laps and eventually win the race and the championship that day. It was the fifth straight race at Phoenix that the pole sitter had led at least 69 or more laps. This number, of course, coincides with the reconfiguration of Phoenix International Raceway that occurred during the spring and summer of 2018.
I have written extensively in the past about how this track transformed. However, at this point there is five races worth of data at the new Phoenix, giving us more than enough information for track and driver expectations. If you are still looking for that data, you can find it here in the Phoenix Race Sheets. As alluded to above, this was the last time we saw the 750 horsepower/low-downforce package. If you’d like to see data on how the races utilizing the 750-horsepower package played out post COVID-19, you can find that info here.
The gist of both data pages is that high horsepower and low downforce create a decided advantage for drivers out front. Since the reconfiguration of Phoenix, just once have we seen a driver start worse than sixth and be a top-two lap leader. That driver was Brad Keselowski in last spring’s race; he started 14th and led 82 laps. Interestingly enough, his teammate Joey Logano led the fourth-most laps that day (60) after starting 13th. There is a strong chance both drivers chose setups ill-suited for qualifying but well equipped for the actual race.
Furthermore, when you look at the 750-horsepower data, the consistent theme is if a driver was going to be a top-two lap leader, they had to start in the top 10. To pile on further, if a driver wanted a top-10 finish, they needed to start there as well. This package places an increased emphasis on where a driver starts to the point it might be unfair.
Instacart 500 NASCAR DFS Lineup Strategy
With that all being said, the first conclusion is that your dominators need to start upfront. Given the fact that this race is essentially a 300-lap event, it makes it even less likely a driver starting 11th or worse will ascend to the lead for an extended stretch. When we get to Martinsville, we might be willing to revisit this number.
As per how many of these lap leaders we need in our lineups, the Race Sheets show a consistent trend for Phoenix. The fall 2020 race had two dominators on both DraftKings and FanDuel. The spring 2020 race had three dominators on both sites. Then, from the fall race of 2019 through the fall race of 2018, the dominator tally was at two for both DraftKings and FanDuel. Two dominant lap leaders are our baseline for cash and tournaments. Meanwhile, your Instacart 500 tournament lineups can look to include a third lap leader.
| Driver | Start | Finish | Score | Salary | Driver | Start | Finish | Score | Salary | |
| Chase Elliott | 1 | 1 | 107.1 | 10600 | Joey Logano | 2 | 3 | 64.88 | 13300 | |
| Joey Logano | 2 | 3 | 92.4 | 10000 | Chase Elliott | 1 | 1 | 64.85 | 12500 | |
| Jimmie Johnson | 26 | 5 | 66.4 | 9300 | Jimmie Johnson | 26 | 5 | 60.05 | 10500 | |
| William Byron | 25 | 9 | 51 | 8400 | Chris Buescher | 31 | 20 | 51.52 | 6700 | |
| Bubba Wallace Jr | 23 | 15 | 37 | 7000 | Bubba Wallace Jr | 23 | 15 | 45.16 | 6400 | |
| Brennan Poole | 35 | 29 | 21 | 4700 | ||||||
| DraftKings | 374.9 | 50000 | FanDuel | 367.5 | 49400 |
Above are your optimal NASCAR DFS lineups from last fall’s Championship Race at Phoenix. Combing Phoenix history, what we saw in the 750-horsepower package, and the template above, that is what I believe lineups should look like this weekend. Dominator candidates will start upfront, and I will generally roster two of them. Dependent on salaries, I will fill out the rest of the lineup with place differential and potential top-10 finishes. If I have to punt on DraftKings, it will come from a driver who is cheap and can finish top 30.
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