NASCAR DFS: Hedging Against Wrecks
One variable that nobody in DFS NASCAR has talked about yet are wrecks. Wrecks, like cautions, are inevitable in the course of a race. For the DFS mind, it isn’t hard to understand how a wreck can quickly put an end to your night. Comparatively, wrecking would be like a Dwight Howard injury in the first quarter of an NBA contest…..night done!
The question that has been asked on twitter is how to prevent a driver from ruining your night by wrecking. The best answer that I can give is, you can’t. Like you all know, a car running at 200 mph doesn’t ask permission before it hits track debris and flips the top salaried driver into the wall. With the scoring system that DraftKings has set up, a wreck could potentially put your driver into the negative. A driver that qualifies in 10th but wrecks and finishes in 42nd (with no points for laps led or fastest laps) will end up deep in the negative, at approximately -30 points. That scoring leaves off pass differential, which could make the final total even worse or just a little better (always cup half full.)
When we examine strategy to prevent succumbing to a wrecked driver, the question is where do we start? One thing to look at is the type of track and how susceptible to wrecking the track has been historically. For obvious reasons, there are a lot of wrecks at short tracks and super speedways. At Bristol (short track), cars are bunched together and the turns are very steep, so finding someone in your blind spot is highly likely as you come down the banking. At a track like Talledega, the “Big One” is guaranteed, so more than likely half of the field will be down for the count nearing the end of the race.
For this weeks race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, the wreck factor hasn’t been as high over the past couple of years. CMS is an intermediate track, but the straightaways still allow drivers to hit high speeds. Unfortunately, this race has been sort of “blah” recently. The leaders have led a lot of laps and usually only come into contact with other cars due to lap traffic or a caution. greenflag hit on the new car setup and how this has impacted the racing style in an earlier post.
So, if track history can’t guarantee safety, what is next? Should we look at individual drivers and how frequently they are in wrecks? Some drivers — here’s looking at you “Wrecky Stenhouse” — have developed nicknames based on their inability to stay out of wrecks. Most of the statistical leaders in wrecking are at the back of the pack, like Landon Cassill or Josh Wise. However, two big name drivers are very susceptible to wrecking based on their aggressive driving: Kyle Busch and Joey Logano. Should I not throw Kyle Busch into my lineup because of aggressive driving? Hmmm, why do you think he wins so much?
With the research on wrecking looking very inconsistent, the solution looks more bankroll related than lineup building. The topic of hedging has been brought up a lot in articles and forums on RotoGrinders. Investopedia defines hedging as “Making an investment to reduce the risk of adverse price movements in an asset. Normally, a hedge consists of taking an offsetting position in a related security, such as a futures contract.” In DFS language, that of course means making multiple lineups to offset the failure of of one. Hedging applies to both GPP and cash games, but I have always approached my strategy with each differently. For cash games I pick two to three plays that I am sure of and then rotate my mid-tier/value plays across multiple lineups (usually four.) The percentage owned is usually very high with the main three, but in a 50/50 or H2H this doesn’t usually hurt the outcome. With GPP plays, I play as many different lineups as my bankroll percentage allows. I may maintain one or two must-haves, but I like exposure to a lot of potential outcomes.
Up until now, I have used this strategy in NBA, NFL, and PGA with consistent success. I will definitely be doing the same for NASCAR. We obviously can’t prevent a wreck from happening, but we can use hedging as a way to prevent the on track wreck absolutely wreck our bankroll.
What other strategies do you guys have to hedge and prevent ruin based on unexpected outcomes?