Daily Fantasy NASCAR: 10 tips to win
— --
Daily fantasy NASCAR is fairly new to the daily fantasy landscape, and if you've played fantasy NASCAR in the past, it's probably different than what you've played before. Here's 10 tips to keep in mind, and to help lead you to some success on racedays.
1) Drivers' finishes are only one of five scoring categories
Don't set your lineup trying to get the five best finishes out of your lineup. Get yourself up to speed on the five scoring categories: finish position, start/finish differential, laps led, pass differential and fastest laps run. This makes every lap important, not just where you are on the final one.
2) Starting position matters, but maybe not how you think
You may have noticed something that doesn't count in the scoring is your starting position, but don't overlook qualifying. A driver's starting position is almost inversely valuable to your score. If you start 10th and finish fifth, you get an extra five points added on to the 39 you earn for the fifth-place finish. If a driver starts first and finishes fifth, he loses four points. Where you start is also going to affect your pass differential throughout the race. When in doubt, look for strong drivers starting mid-pack.
3) Dominating races gets you more points than winning them
Winning races can be incredibly fickle in NASCAR. Those who have watched a lot of races know how often they can come down to pit strategy, or how late-race wackiness can send a driver spinning from the lead to a back-of-the-field finish. However, with the scoring settings for daily fantasy NASCAR, the importance of leading laps, running fast laps, and moving through the field often is more important than where you end up. Judging by the fantasy points drivers would have earned from 2014's Sprint Cup Series races, about 42 percent of races would've been won by drivers that didn't earn the most points in the race (15 of 36). A driver's dominant day doesn't go to waste in DFS.
4) Find who you think will dominate the race, and start your team there
Take all the data you can get, and pick a driver who you think is going to give you that big number. Use recent historical data on races. Drivers starting on the pole average the most fastest laps and laps led, drivers starting second, then third, then fourth average the most after that. However, those drivers can lose you points if they qualify better than they race. With an average of $10,000 per driver, the most expensive driver will probably start around $14,000, so one driver isn't going to kill your budget if you draft smartly from there on down. So pick wisely, but find your dominator and make sure you have him.
5) The bottom of your roster is just as important as the top
Don't look at your fourth and fifth selections as throwaways. A bad day can get you a negative number, so pick your one or (more likely) two low-budget drivers wisely. Taking a driver who exceeded expectations in qualifying is a recipe for a negative day, starting fifth and finishing 20th gets you just nine points. Starting 35th and finishing 20th gets you 39. Make sure your drivers are starting races and running the distance instead of pulling off track early. Look for part-time drivers in good equipment and upcoming prospect drivers running a partial schedule to fill out your roster, but make sure you're getting the value. Sometimes the hype will raise the price, and you're no longer getting the bargain.
6) Practice speeds can be a good indicator of race success
Typically, there's three practice sessions before the race, and given that drivers can run an unlimited number of laps in these session, they're often a better indicator of success than qualifying, which might just be a few laps. Don't just look at single-lap speed, see which drivers are running a lot of laps and their average speed over 10-lap runs, which is available on the practice speeds report.
7) Location, location, location
Check out where the series is racing on a weekly basis. Your strategy should change based on the track. Two races a year are on road courses, where certain drivers thrive, and others see it more as a throwaway. The intermediate tracks that make up the bulk of the schedule are good indicators of each other. Strength at those seems to carry over week to week. Restrictor plate races are a totally different animal.
8) Use recent history more than ancient history
Sure, Driver X might be a four-time winner at this track, but maybe those wins came with a different team, and the track has been repaved since then. There's a lot of factors that can change year to year: A team has become more technologically advanced; a driver has slowed with age; a crew chief helped a driver reach his potential; a track has changed its configuration. If a driver has been dominating, they might've moved ahead of the curve. In NASCAR, everything is cyclical: Teams catch up to each other and former powerhouses drop off. Keep up to date with what's going on.
9) Don't just look at driver tendencies, look at track tendencies too
Some tracks are totally different animals, and you need to change your strategy accordingly. What if I told you that over the past few years, drivers in restrictor-plate races (Daytona and Talladega) starting seventh have averaged less than five points a race? The starting position at those races that earn the most points on average? 39th. Those tracks are only one-ninth of the Cup schedule, but each race is its own season, and you can stay ahead of your competition.
10) Don't change your strategy off a bad week
These tips are all designed to help over a long-term basis. NASCAR can be very screwy at times, blown engines and wrecks are tough to predict, and current NASCAR rules keep a lot of cars on the lead lap, so a single flat tire could do a lot of damage to a finishing position. Pick your strategy, and stay the course.
Related Stories
ABC News Live