Daily Fantasy Nascar Picks
Food City 500

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Food City 500

Britol Motor Speedway - Bristol, TN
Track - .533 Mile Oval Short Track
24°-30° Banking in the Corners

Another week, another Kyle Busch win. The #18 team didn't have the best car throughout the race last week but they made the correct adjustments and came out on top when it counted the most. Kyle joined Jimmie Johnson as the only other driver with multiple wins in 2016 and look to battle each other all season long for the top spot. Don't forget about Kevin Harvick and the #4 team either. He finished 10th in Texas which was his sixth Top 10 in seven races. With Texas in the books we get back to bumping and banging as the Sprint Cup series heads to Bristol.

This week the drivers get their first taste of Bristol Motor Speedway in 2016 as they prepare for the Food City 500 on Sunday afternoon. Bristol is a track with many nicknames(Worlds Fastest Half Mile, The Bullring, Thunder Valley) and is one of the best spectacles in NASCAR. Get ready for some bumping and banging and drivers short on patience. Bristol is a half mile track with 24°-30° banking in the turns that creates exciting door to door racing for 500 laps.

For fantasy it is tough to build cash game lineups here at Bristol as the race is conducive to lots of cautions and crashes. Even the best drivers can be sent to garage early if they aren't lucky. Like Superspeedway racing, it may be a great week to enter multiple GPP lineups and build around your core drivers.

I will again be selling a cheatsheet every week of the NASCAR season. It will include drivers, salaries for DraftKings and FantasyFeud, post qualifying Vegas Odds, current form(last 5 races), track history(last 5 races), and I update the cheatsheet throughout the weekend following practice and qualifying. With the purchase of the cheatsheet you also get a few sample lineups. These lineups will almost always change following qualifying and practice so be sure to check lineup page before lineups lock on Sunday.

I have added weighted rankings for Track History, Current Form, Season Loop Data and Practice/Qualifying. This will help better identify the best values each week and can be full customized by the user. Just download the View Only version from the lineups page and create copy which will then allow you to change any weights or sort any column you wish. If you have any questions about the cheatsheet throw me an email(jagerbombs99@gmail.com) or hit me up on Twitter(@jager_bombs9).

Let's dig in and look at some targets for this week. Be sure to check back following Final Practice on Saturday as I will have a recap of the weekend leading up to the race and go through some values that pop up from qualifying/practice.

 

Upper Tier Targets ($9,000+)

 

Kyle Busch
DraftKings - $10,700
Fantasy Feud - $265,000
Practice #1 - 8th
Qualified - 5th
Practice #2 - 1st
Final Practice - 5th

It's been the Kyle Busch show across all three NASCAR series the past two weeks. Even if you don't like the guy you have to respect what he is accomplishing. Not only has been dominating the Xfinity and Truck series(which has been a big topic of conversation) he has also been extremely successful in defending his Sprint Cup title so far in 2016. With his win at Texas last week he now has back to back wins and has finished all but one race(25th at Fontana) inside the Top 5. That is a pretty incredible start. Now he comes back to Bristol where he has enjoyed tremendous success in his career with five career wins(most of any track in NASCAR). Look for Kyle to carry the momentum over to his favorite track and be there contending for his third straight win on Sunday.

 

 

Matt Kenseth
DraftKings - $10,000
Fantasy Feud - $220,000
Practice #1 - 11th
Qualified - 2nd
Practice #2 - 8th
Final Practice - 10th

If you don't want to pay up for Kyle or just don't like him in general, turn to his teammate Matt Kenseth this week. He is the defending champion of this race and has a great track history here. In the past five years(10 races) here at Bristol he has two wins, five Top 5's, six Top 10's and a 13.2 average finish. He has also led the most laps of any driver in that time with 688. It has been an up and down season for the #20 team but look for them to be up front at some point in the race and contend for the win.

 

 

Brad Keselowski 
DraftKings - $9,800
Fantasy Feud - $225,000
Practice #1 - 3rd
Qualified - 12th
Practice #2 - 28th
Final Practice - 15th

Another driver with some nice track history here at Bristol. Besides being wrecked in this race last spring he has finished three of the last four races inside the Top 6. In the last five years here he has tallied two wins, four Top 5's, five Top 10's and  a 14.0 average finish. He knows how to race short tracks and won't hesitate to use everything in his power to make a pass. He could very well join Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch as multiple race winners come Sunday afternoon.

 

Also Consider - Jimmie Johnson

Middle Tier Targets ($6,500-$9,000)

 

Kasey Kahne 
DraftKings - $7,800
Fantasy Feud - $135,000
Practice #1 - 20th
Qualified - 11th
Practice #2 - 9th
Final Practice -  9th

After a rough start to the season, he picked up his second Top 10 of the season last week at Texas and will look to carry the momentum over into Bristol. He has one career win here and in the last 10 races has recorded two Top 5's and five Top 10's with a 16.5 average finish. I definitely won't be trusting him in cash games this week but he makes a terrific GPP play as he is normally very low owned compared to the other drivers in his range.

 

Ryan Newman
DraftKings - $7,300
Fantasy Feud - $115,000
Practice #1 - 13th
Qualified - 17th
Practice #2 - 10th
Final Practice - 27th

If you are going to play cash games this week Newman makes a great choice as he has been a very consistent short track racer. He hasn't picked up a win here in his career but in the last 10 races has a Top 5 and five Top 10 finishes with the fifth best average finish(13.8). He comes at a very affordable price and if he qualifies poorly could be a terrific value play.

 

Also Consider - Paul Menard

 

 

Low End Targets ($6,500 and Below)

 

Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
DraftKings - $6,400
Fantasy Feud - $95,000
Practice #1 - 26th
Qualified - 32nd
Practice #2 - 12th
Final Practice - 12th

My #1 value play of the week regardless of where he starts the race. He has raced here at Bristol six times in his early career and picked up two Top 5's and three Top 10's with an impressive 11.2 average finish. Hard to fade a driver with a mid $6K price tag, especially with that sort of track history.

Also Consider - Regan Smith, Aric Almirola

 

 

Post Practice & Qualifying Update

Qualifying Top 10

 

Copy and save: Weekend schedule for Bristol. #NASCAR@NASCARonNBChttps://t.co/YNNVB888Lo

— NASCARTalk (@NASCARTalkNBC) April 14, 2016

 

Front row for #ToyotaNation at Bristol!#NASCAR pic.twitter.com/YxJtPGcnwv

— Joe Gibbs Racing (@JoeGibbsRacing) April 15, 2016

.@dennyhamlin was ⚡️ fast in #FoodCity500 final practice. https://t.co/PgXYQhQQvc pic.twitter.com/JHuJ4FE9F5

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) April 16, 2016

If you have any questions on lineups or drivers prior to lineup lock scroll down to the comment section and join the conversation.

 

Good Luck everyone!

 

 

Want to see how these picks and more fit into lineups for the Food City 500? Chris is selling lineups only $5. He covers DraftKings and FantasyFeud Cash Games & Tournaments. Fill out the form below or click here to purchase using PayPal. This is a separate service than our traditional monthly membership.

Chris Durell has been playing Daily Fantasy Sports for three years and fantasy in general for more than a decade. He is active player in college football, NFL, NBA, PGA, and of course NASCAR. He lives in Saskatchewan, Canada with his wife and two daughters. You can follow him on Twitter at @jager_bombs9 for advice, strategy, answers to any NASCAR questions or how he copes with the winters up north.