Prellezo’s picks: DFS plays for the Consumers Energy 400

NASCAR fans get a big weekend, with a Sunday race — the Consumers Energy 400 — right on the heels of Saturday’s Firekeepers Casino 400. Saturday was no surprise, as Kevin Harvick took the lead and dominated the majority of the race. Once he got the lead, he never let it go.

Sunday’s race is at the same track, but we have some different starting spots. To start things off, I’m going to look at the top DFS plays for the Consumers Energy 400. Given there is still no practice, I’m relying a ton on track history, recent speeds since the restart, the drivers who are in good form and place differential. 

My plan is to focus on the drivers with the highest exposure in my 10 lineups. If you haven’t done so, please take a look at the “how to build” NASCAR lineups article (NASCAR Building 101) . We also have our projections and optimizer (FTN NASCAR Optimizer).

In the last five races at this track, the best finishers have been Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski, Kurt Busch, Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. The most laps led in the last five years have been Logano (though I plan to have limited exposure), Harvick, Keselowski and Truex. 

I’m going off what happened Saturday and focusing on four place differential drivers while focusing on two key dominators.

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• Value locks this week — pick 3-4 per lineup
  • Cole Custer
  • Austin Dillon
  • Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  • John Hunter Nemechek
  • Ty Dillon — less appealing
  • Ryan Preece — less appealing
• Point differential plays to lock (after the above value plays)
  • Kevin Harvick
  • Denny Hamlin
  • Brad Keselowski
  • Ryan Blaney
  • Martin Truex Jr.

I will have the above drivers in a good chunk of my main lineups. My favorite plays are as follows:

• Kevin Harvick — It seems like we lock in Harvick every week. He dominated Saturday and could easily do it again.
• Martin Truex Jr., Brad Keselowski, Chase Elliott, Denny Hamlin — Will have some combination of two of these drivers (though if I lock in Harvick, I might only do one instead of two). Their track history, current green flag speed, racing during restart, etc., all scream to lock them in.
• Three or four of the value guys above.
• Favorite mid- to upper-tier guys — Alex Bowman and Erik Jones (slight lean to Bowman)

I doubt I’ll use any other drivers except the ones I wrote about. If anything changes, I will post in Discord and update everyone. It’s a small player pool Sunday.