NASCAR DFS Worksheet: Pennzoil 400

NASCAR is in Las Vegas for this weekend’s racing action. We have another 1.5-mile intermediate track for the Pennzoil 400, but this track isn’t quite the same as Homestead last week. Las Vegas has a much smoother surface, so tire wear isn’t as much of a factor as it was in Miami.

However, like last week, we again have plenty of dominator points up for grabs in this one with 267 laps on tap. On DraftKings that means 66.75 laps led points and 120.15 fastest lap points. So we’re going to want to focus on building lineups with drivers who can dominate and lead a bunch of laps.

Over the last two Vegas races, DraftKings optimal lineups have had at least two drivers who started in the top-10. Last year’s fall race featured Denny Hamlin (10), Kurt Busch (9) and Alex Bowman (8) in the optimal lineup, and we saw Kevin Harvick (3) and Joey Logano (5) in the spring optimal lineup. So building lineups with two drivers in the top-10 on the grid is a solid formula, as Vegas tends to feature long green flag runs that tend to spread out the field. From there, we’ll want to focus our efforts on drivers who offer place differential potential. We can get pretty close to the $50,000 cap with these builds as the fall and spring optimal lineups left just $400 and $300 on the table respectively.

FanDuel builds are always a bit different from DraftKings builds, and we saw that last year with just Logano in the spring optimal and Hamlin and Busch in the fall optimal. So it isn’t as necessary to get drivers starting up front in your builds. FanDuel builds will be more focused on place differential and you won’t have to pay down to put together some solid lineups.

Using my NASCAR model, I simulated this race 10,000 times and then translated these results into NASCAR DFS projections for both DraftKings and FanDuel. You’ll also see ceiling and floor projections for each driver.

As I noted above, we want to focus our efforts on finding at least two drivers who can dominate a good chunk of this race for DraftKings builds. The two most likely candidates are Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott. As noted above, Hamlin hit the optimal lineup in the fall leading 151 laps in the process. Elliott did not hit optimal, but he did dominate a good chunk of the race, leading 73 laps and posting 50 fastest laps. 

Outside of Elliott and Hamlin, Martin Truex is coming off a solid outing at Homestead and is always a big factor on 1.5-mile tracks. Kevin Harvick should draw a lot of attention on the poll, but it might make sense to be underweight on him. If he doesn’t get out front, it’s going to be tough for him to reach 5x value even at his reasonable price point. It’s also worth having some exposure to Kyle Larson, who has been fast so far this season.

William Byron ran away with last week’s race and should draw plenty of ownership as a result, but he’s a hard fade for me this week. Like Harvick, Byron could struggle to reach value if he doesn’t manage to get out front. Likewise, Kyle Busch screams fade at his price point. He’s the most expensive driver on the grid on DraftKings and starts too far back to be in the mix to rack up early dominator points.

While Byron is a fade, his teammate Alex Bowman is very interesting. He starts inside the top 10 on the grid and has run very well on this track. Joey Logano has also had a lot of success here with wins in each of the last two spring races. He’s worth reasonably heavy exposure and offers some place differential potential along with the chance for a win. Ryan Blaney figures to be one of the most heavily rostered drivers on the slate. Blaney hasn’t gotten off to the best start to the season, but his massive place differential potential is too much to ignore.

There are some reasonably good values under the $9,000 range this week. Both Matt DiBenedetto and Aric Almirola are in good equipment and have major place differential upside. You don’t quite have the same upside with Chase Briscoe and Ross Chastain, but both drivers are interesting at their price points. Erik Jones is always a risky play, but his low starting position on the grid makes him appealing.

Unfortunately, pricing this week doesn’t give us any options under $6,000, so we’re going to need to lean heavily on the guys in yellow above. Ricky Stenhouse is the priciest of that bunch and also comes with the most risk. I’d go lighter on him and instead lean more on Chris Buescher, Corey LaJoie and Daniel Suarez. We also have a nice gift with Cole Custer’s pricing. At just $6,500, he’s an absolute steal and is part of my core.