NASCAR Projections Review: Hollywood Casino 400
Yesterday marked the second race, of the second round, of the NASCAR chase for the cup, and brought us a much more standard race, with a much more standard set of results as compared to last week. Kevin Harvick looked strong all weekend and capped it off with an impressive victory to bounce back from the last few races and punch his ticket for round three.
There were a few big names that had some trouble, mainly Brad Keselowski, Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Jamie McMurray and Aric Almirola (a popular value play across the industry). Aside from the wrecks, there were a few surprise names that did well. AJ Allmendinger rode the momentum of a late surge to a top ten finish, and Michael McDowell gained 11 spots on the day, finishing 22nd and leading the way for the “punt plays”.
Let’s dig in and see how the projections did…
Find out more details about the package in the Daily Marketplace!
Finish Potential Grade
For this race, we gave out three A grades in the finish potential category, which again generally means race winning potential, and for the 2nd week in a row we drew the winner out of those A grades (with the other two finishing in the top 10). There were seven B grades (top 5 potential), with three of them finishing in the top 5, two of them wrecking (Keselowski and Elliott), Truex finishing 11th and Denny Hamlin bouncing back from some car troubles to finish 15th. Rounding out the top 10 was Austin Dillon, riding a 2-tire pit stop late to a solid finish, Alex Bowman and Kasey Kahne continuing a solid stretch for team Hendrick, and our biggest surprise of the day, the previously mentioned AJ Allmendinger taking his D grade and rubbing it in my face. I’d say in terms of grading finish potential, this was our strongest race since the projections went live.
Mover Potential Grade
A relatively quite race as far as wrecks go, which means the guys that picked up big mover points this week actually earned it. Johnson, Harvick and Kahne were among the favorites to gain positions and did just that. The big surprise here, was the run of Michael McDowell, who gained 11 positions to go from 33rd to 22nd and help someone win a seat in the DraftKings live NASCAR final along the way. Overall we gave out three A grades, with two of them wrecking (Larson and Almirola) and the other finishing in the top spot. Nine of our fifteen B grades picked up four or more spots.
Dominator Potential Grade
Dominator points, where the big money is made, and I think if you combined the projections with Stevie’s advice, you probably did pretty well in this category yesterday. We gave out two A grades, to the guys on the front row, Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch, with Kenseth leading basically the first half of the race. The 2nd half saw two main dominators, in Carl Edwards and Kevin Harvick, who made up two of our four B grades, with the others being Truex and Logano (who picked up a few FL’s, but nothing significant). Stevie preached all weekend that he thought Harvick was the car to beat and that he had a good chance at leading some laps, despite starting a little further back in the field, and sure enough he nailed that one.
Overall Projection Results
Overall, a very solid week for the projections, with only a few surprises (Dinger and McDowell) and a below average number of wrecks. We did pretty well in all three categories, and the overall view of the projection results show that. Hopefully, you were able to avoid the duds and put together some really solid lineups.
Next week, things get pretty crazy. A chase elimination race at one of the most unpredictable tracks on the NASCAR schedule. I’m sure Stevie will cover it in depth as the week progress, but we will for sure have a very different approach to this race, and likely a much different look to the projections and results. Hopefully DraftKings increases the contest sizes, because this is a great track for throwing GPP darts.