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The NASCAR Cup Series heads to Road America on Sunday for the Kwik Trip 250. (Have y'all been to a Kwik Trip? I recently moved to Iowa, where they're called Kwik Star, and there's one near me. It rules. Sorry, back to NASCAR.)
This is the third visit to Road America for the Cup Series. Tim Flock won in 1956, and then the series took a long, long break from the Wisconsin track, returning in 2021, when Chase Elliott led 24 of 62 laps on his way to victory lane.
Below are my NASCAR DFS lineup picks for DraftKings and FanDuel this week. This slate locks on 7/3/22 at 3:23 p.m. ET. If you have any questions or want to talk NASCAR, you can find me on Twitter at @juscarts.
DFS Lineup Picks - DraftKings, FanDuel
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Chase Elliott
Starts 1st - DraftKings $11,100 | FanDuel $14,000
There are two obvious picks to win this race. One, Kyle Larson, finished second here on Saturday in the Xfinity race and looked in control until Ty Gibbs got past him late. There's nothing wrong with playing Larson.
But Elliott feels slightly ahead of Larson when figuring out projections for Sunday, largely because he's on the pole. That seems like a good place to be at Road America. William Byron led 15 laps from the pole last year, though he had issues that led to him finishing 33rd.
In Xfinity, the polesitter hasn't won here since 2013, but a driver starting on the front row has won two of the last three Road America races, and Saturday's polesitter led 31 of the 48 laps.
A.J. Allmendinger
Starts 21st - DraftKings $9,100| FanDuel $11,000
While I'm playing Elliott in search of laps led and fastest laps, the rest of my lineup is heavy on place differential plays because we have fewer laps than we usually do. With less lap-based points available, I'll be targeting the place differential instead, starting with one of NASCAR's best road course racers, A.J. Allmendinger.
After starting last in Saturday's Xfinity race, Allmendinger made it all the way up to sixth in the final running order, and even used strategy to get up front for a little bit.
Allmendinger has two Cup Series wins on road courses. He didn't manage to get a good result here last year, but he's a former Road America winner in Xfinity and has four top 10s in five starts here in that series.
William Byron
Starts 29th - DraftKings $9,000 | FanDuel $9,000
Byron spun during qualifying and will start 29th, which means we have a Hendrick car starting outside of the top 25! Love that for our PD search.
Last year, Byron won the pole here and led 15 laps, but he wound up finishing 33rd. That finish wasn't great, but there were strong signs of future success at this track for Byron. He was sixth in his lone Xfinity Series start here. He's a strong place differential play on Sunday.
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Daniel Suárez
Starts 17th - DraftKings $7,700 | FanDuel $11,500
Huge price disparity between the sites here, so I'll likely fade Suárez on FanDuel, but I love this play on DraftKings.
Suárez won at Sonoma, his first Cup Series victory. That was his third top five finish on a road course, which means 15.7% of his road course starts have resulted in top fives. Overall, just 6.1% of his starts have been top fives, so we can see that Suárez has tended to have a slightly higher ceiling on tracks like this.
Of course, he finished 36th here last year, so not everything is good when it comes to the signs this weekend. It's worth noting, though, that Suárez was fourth in his most recent Xfinity start here in 2016.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Starts 33rd - DraftKings $6,900 | FanDuel $5,000
Stenhouse hasn't run well this season at road courses, but he was 12th here last year.
But really, this play isn't about good Stenhouse has or hasn't been at road courses. It's just simply a place differential play. Any car with the speed that the 47 has would be in play at this price with this starting spot. The fact that Stenhouse only has an average finish of 23.4 at road courses is concerning, but it's much less concerning when you factor in that finishing at his career average is still +10 spots on the grid. That's the beauty of playing someone who starts this far back: he really just needs to survive the race.
Justin Haley
Starts 34th - DraftKings $5,900 | FanDuel $4,500
Haley has quietly been solid on road courses this season. He finished 15th at COTA and 12th at Sonoma, a couple of his best runs this season.
Being teammates with A.J. Allmendinger definitely helps this team get dialed in at these kind of tracks. But it's also not like Haley just suddenly got decent at road courses either. He has 10 top 10s in 16 road course starts in Xfinity, which includes two top 10s in three Road America starts. The non top 10 here was an 11th in 2020. Lot of place differential upside for Haley on Sunday at a really good cost.
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