NASCAR By the Numbers: Coke Zero 400
This weekend we head to Daytona for the Coke Zero 400. The race Saturday night at 7:30 PM EST on NBC. This weekend’s $300,000 Firecracker on DraftKings is also the RotoGrinders King of Summer event #4.
Like Sonoma last weekend, we will be focusing on place differential plays this weekend. In cash games, I highly recommend looking at guys in the top five, but in GPPs, everybody is in play.
I’m going with heavy place differential plays in cash games this weekend, and that’s what I’ll be focusing on in this article.
Kevin Harvick – $10,300 – Starting 21st – Harvick is my favorite cash game play this weekend, and he has been a lot this season. Harvick is having a great season, and leads the point standings. He also has 13 top ten finishes in 16 races and an average finish of 6.5 over the last six races this season. He has three straight top five finishes, and he won this race in July of 2010. I really like the floor for Harvick, and like I said, he’s my favorite cash game play this weekend.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. – $10,600 – Starting 16th – My first thought is always to fade Jr. at Daytona, but it’s almost impossible for me to fade him at this starting spot. He has won two of the last five races at Daytona, and he won this race last July. He has six top ten finishes in the last ten races at Daytona. If Earnhardt finishes in the top five, he will score at least 50 fantasy points. He has a great floor this weekend, and I’m going to be really heavy on him.
Martin Truex Jr. – $9,500 – Starting 15th – I will be the first to admit; I hardly ever target Truex at super speedways. He’s never won at Daytona, and he only have three top ten finishes in 22 career races here. Truex is one of my favorite GPP plays this weekend. He showed what he can do in February, and just how important it is for them to be working with JGR. The Toyotas were unstoppable in the 500, and they’ve said a couple times already, they’d like to work together again. With all four JGR cars in the top ten, they’ll just be waiting for Truex to catch up with him.
Jamie McMurray – $7,800 – Starting 29th – McMurray is simply starting too far back not to look at him this weekend. It was very rare to see him qualify so far back, but it’s great for fantasy. He’s been very boom or bust in his last ten races here, but he does have two career wins at Daytona. He’s spent some time with Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, and I’ve always been a fan of anybody that’s worked with Jr. on a super speedway. He has an average finish of 20.6 over his last five races here, and I’ll take a floor of +9 place differential at his price tag.
Value Play
Michael McDowell – $5,700 – Starting 37th – If you guys remember the 500, I was super high on McDowell, and he didn’t disappoint with a 15th place finish. This is really close to the same kind of love, and he’s starting 37th instead of 39th. He has three top 15 finishes in his last five races here. The last July race he ran was 2014, and he finished seventh after starting 27th. We will talk about Regan Smith on the Grinders Live show tomorrow, so make sure you guys tune in.