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This week, NASCAR's doing things backwards, with the Cup Series starting off the weekend of action on Thursday night before a Friday/Saturday doubleheader for the Truck Series and an Xfinity race on Sunday to cap things off.
It's odd, but it's also exciting because it means we get one more weeknight Cup race before other sports leagues get back to dominating the airwaves on weeknights.
Feel free to hit me up on Twitter if you have any NASCAR questions (or, really, any questions about any sport that isn't baseball)": @juscarts.
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NASCAR DFS Research for Super Start Batteries 400
If you are not familiar, in this article I will highlight some helpful NASCAR data from my deep dive into the Premium Research Station. You can get full access to that Premium DFS Tool, and others including our Lineup Optimizer, with our NASCAR Premium Pass.
Be sure to also check out all of our other weekly NASCAR DFS articles and analysis to help you set your optimal DFS lineups.
Top Fantasy Values At Kansas
Obviously, building a strong DFS lineup requires you to find some strong value, and one thing our Research Station can provide you is the tools needed to find those values.
One way to determine value -- projected fantasy points per $1,000 dollar salary. Basically, which drivers are projected to score the most fantasy points relative to their price. This can help you figure out how to maximize your projected fantasy points.
Let's look at DraftKings numbers this week. Here's the big value area:
Clint Bowyer starts 19th at his hometown track this week. While he's only had eight top 10s in 23 starts here, two of those came last year at this track. His 5.47 projected FP/$ feels like a really good value to put in a lot of DraftKings lineups this week.
Ricky Stenhouse is $500 cheaper than Bowyer and was a slightly higher projected value at 5.54 FP/$. Stenhouse has never had a top 10 here, but he does have four 11th place finishes at the track, including three of those since 2017. Stenhouse is fine here, and stating 25th gives him plenty of place differential upside.
On the flip side, Matt Kenseth is the worst value in this tier of drivers at 4.06 FP/$. Kenseth has had a pretty rough season since taking over this Chip Ganassi 42 car, but his 28 projected fantasy points is lower than every driver priced higher than him and the three drivers directly after him in pricing. Not great!
Kansas Driver Ratings
NASCAR's driver rating formula puts together a lot of factors to spit out a number that rates how a driver performed in a certain race.
Here are the ratings for the top DraftKings drivers:
So, here's what's interesting to me about the 10 highest-priced drivers: they're all pretty good here, aside from Jimmie Johnson's recent issues here. But even Johnson had two top 10s last year and was money here before 2017.
Basically, there's not really a top guy who you can just instantly fade like you might most weeks. And there's room to pay less for your top guys and find some extra money to help out on the bottom margin, although Kevin Harvick's numbers here are good enough that they kind of put him in his own top tier by himself.
Outside of this top pricing group, some quick driver rating notes:
- Kurt Busch has a 91.6 recent rating here and 92.3 since 2013.
- Clint Bowyer's overall rating here is 76.2, but recently it's been 90.5.
- Matt Kenseth's recent Kansas driver rating: 45.8. YIKES. I really don't feel comfortable having Kenseth in my lineups this week.
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Track Correlations
One of my favorite parts of the Research Station is the NASCAR Track Correlation Matrix, which helps us see which tracks produce similar results.
For Kansas, there's almost too much track correlation, though. Tracks with a correlation percentage of 90 percent or higher for Kansas: Dover, Phoenix, Loudon, Chicagoland, Texas, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Kentucky, Auto Club, Michigan, and Pocono.
So, trying to go through ALL of those tracks to figure things out is a lot. Instead, let's look exclusively at the tracks from that list that count as intermediate tracks.
One thing that's also in the Research Station -- and there's a lot in there, so go subscribe to it using the discount code "CARTER," y'all 😉 -- is a sheet that looks at driver rating by track type and shows how they perform vs. the field and vs. their average.
Kevin Harvick -- no surprise here -- has an average driver rating that is 142 percent of the field, and eight percent above his own average. Martin Truex Jr. is at 151 percent of the field and seven percent over his own average. Those are two guys who excel at this kind of track.
Some guys who rate below their usual average here by at least five percent: Ryan Newman, Ty Dillon, Matt DiBenedetto (though that's factoring in some of his performance for an underfunded ride he used to be in).
Some guys at four percent or more over their average: Kurt Busch, Aric Almirola, Ricky Stenhouse Jr.. Some possible value there, hmm?
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The Keys to Weekly NASCAR Success
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