NASCAR DFS & Betting Preview: Wise Power 400 Odds & Pricing
Hey everyone, welcome to the RotoGrinders daily fantasy NASCAR and betting recap/preview article. This is a new series for the 2022 season.
This week we head to Fontana, California for the Wise Power 400. Last season, the NASCAR didn’t head to Fontana because of the pandemic. This will be the first time since March of 2020 that cars have been on track at Auto Club Speedway. The Wise Power 400 is Sunday at 3:30pm EST on FOX. The XFINITY Series will be racing this weekend as well, Saturday at 5pm EST on FS1. The Trucks are off this weekend, and will return at Las Vegas on March 4th.
Race Preview
Auto Club Speedway is a unique track, and one of the hardest tracks to compare to others. It’s a 2-mile D-Shaped Oval, and one of two, two-mile tracks in NASCAR. Michigan is also a two-mile track but it has a low-tire wear track. We could group it together with old Atlanta, which I think comps the best, plus Darlington and Homestead because they’re high tire wear tracks. The fact is, we don’t have a lot of data to look at with this new car, and we don’t have a lot of data to compare Auto Club Speedway to. We do have a 15-minute practice session, and qualifying this weekend, which should give us a small idea who is strong. I’ll be looking at a few other things as well.
DraftKings NASCAR Fantasy Preview
The race this weekend is 200 laps, which means we have 140 potential dominator points on DraftKings, and 20 laps led, and 20 laps completed points on FanDuel. We typically see two dominators on DraftKings, in 2020, Blaney would have been an optimal dominator without a tire issue. With the high tire wear, drivers maintaining tires, could eat up a lot of fastest laps. These new cars should be easier to pass the leader, which is always a tough thing to do at a track like Auto Club.
With a very limited practice session, I’ll be looking at high tire wear track data, Atlanta 2021 data, and a few other things when building lineups this weekend. In 2019 and 2020, NASCAR ran the 550hp package at Auto Club, so we’re dealing with even more limited data this weekend. There have been 1-2 dominators in five straight races here. I still think it’s early in the week to make the decision for how many dominators, we need to look at practice and qualifying data. I’ll be covering this more in By The Numbers and the Driver Breakdown show.
Last 3 DraftKings Optimal Lineups at Auto Club (Starting Spots)
2020 – Alex Bowman (3rd), Denny Hamlin (28th), Martin Truex Jr. (38th), Erik Jones (29th), Tyler Reddick (19th), Ross Chastain (27th) – $49,700 – 358.75 – 1 Dominator
2019 – Kyle Busch (4th), Brad Keselowski (13th), Ryan Blaney (10th), William Byron (22nd), Michael McDowell (29th), Cody Ware (34th) – $50,000 – 321.75 – 2 Dominators
2018 – Martin Truex Jr. (1st), Kyle Busch (2nd), Jimmie Johnson (33rd), Clint Bowyer (26th), William Byron (29th), Cole Whitt (37th) – $49,900 – 355.5 – 2 Dominators
Wise Power 400 Betting Odds
Early week bets are going to be tough for the first part of the season. We have very little data, and a new car, so we’re going to be adjusting throughout the season. I expect Kyle Larson to be strong, and he’s sitting at +400 at most books. Blaney has a strong history here, and he’s currently sitting at +1200 on DraftKings. I think there is some value to betting that early, and it’s moved to +1000 in other books. Featured matchups don’t offer a ton of value on DraftKings, but I do like Alex Bowman over William Byron at -110.
Fantasy and Betting Recap
Denny Hamlin, Austin Dillon, and Aric Almirola were the three highest owned drivers in almost all contest across DraftKings. When taking Daytona strategy into mind, they were the three best plays heading into the race. Logano, Harvick, and Byron all starting in the 20’s, were strong tournament plays that didn’t work out. Five of the six best plays heading into the race didn’t work out, and that’s not uncommon for Daytona. Cole Custer finished two laps down, and still scored 35.35 fantasy points and was in the winning lineup for the Millionaire maker. Kyle Larson was 18% owned starting on the pole, which tells us, there is still an edge in superspeedway racing.
Daytona always offers lower owned plays with a lot of value. There were five drivers that scored 40+ fantasy points at less than 7% ownership. Austin Cindric winning the race and scoring 54.25 fantasy points could have been a big difference maker in tournaments. He wasn’t in the winning lineup, but he was part of the optimal. In large field tournaments, these plays didn’t have the ceiling, but in cash games and single-entry tournaments, they had good value. It’s important to understand what type of contest you’re playing. In large field tournaments, you’re chasing a high ceiling, low floor build. In a single-entry tournament, you can build a higher floor team with high ceiling.
First off, congrats to Shaun.Traylor9 for taking down the Millionaire Maker on DraftKings. The optimal lineup was Aric Almirola, David Ragan, Bubba Wallace, Daniel Hemric, Austin Cindric, and Ryan Blaney. The optimal lineup scored 363.85 fantasy points for $45,900. The winning lineup was 19.30 less fantasy points. Bubba Wallace and David Ragan were the two big difference makers for Shaun.Traylor9. Those two paired with Blaney, was a three-player combo that was low owned. Overall, it was a strong overall lineup. Ryan Blaney (7th), Bubba Wallace (16th), David Ragan (34th), Cole Custer (31st), Aric Almirola (38th), and Daniel Hemric (33rd) is a strong lineup construction given the Daytona lineup construction strategy.
There were 96,753 lineups entered into the DraftKings Millionaire contest. Only 40.1% (38,781) of lineups were unique. The highest duplicated lineup was Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano, Austin Dillon, Aric Almirola, Daniel Hemric, and Noah Gragson. You can look more into this with RotoGrinders/FantasyLabs ResultsDB.