Kyle Busch drives during the NASCAR Sprint Cup auto race, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016, in Homestead, Fla. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)
Chris Durell will be bringing you his weekly race breakdown, top trends, and pre-qualifying targets to help you cash on DraftKings and FanDuel. You can also grab a copy of his free DFS NASCAR Cheatsheet that includes a ton of stats and a customizable model.
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With five races remaining in the regular season, the Monster Energy Cup Series heads to Watkins Glen, New York for the Go Bowling at the Glen this Sunday afternoon.
Before we get into the race let's talk about the Playoffs and more specifically what we could see this weekend for strategy. I have drivers broken down into groups this week and for a more complete breakdown, you can grab a copy of my notes provided in the member's chatroom. For starters, you have a group of drivers who already have a win and are looking for nothing more than....wait for it....more wins, and of course, the crucial playoff points that come with it and stage wins. The upside is obvious here. The next group of drivers are those fighting for playoff points. Their strategies could most definitely be swayed towards picking up stage points which could hurt their overall finish position/fantasy upside, especially here where track position is so crucial. It will really come down to whether they decide they have a car to win after practice or not. Stay tuned. The final group are drivers more than 60 points outside the cutline and pretty are pretty much in a win or go home(not literally) mode.
From a fantasy perspective, there are only 90 laps in the race so dominator points are somewhat downgraded this week. I say "somewhat" because we can't completely rule them out as multiple drivers have led 20 or more laps in each of the last six races and that can give your driver an advantage when it comes to fantasy scoring coming down to fractions of points. Again, stay tuned for practice speeds and the final update on the cheatsheet. Place differential used to be a thing here as the 2013, 2014, and 2015 races saw 10 or more drivers pick up double-digit PD in each. Then 2016 saw seven drivers grab double-digit PD points followed by just two drivers in each of the last two races getting there on double-digit PD.
We will most certainly have to see how this plays out as we have another impound race this weekend. For anyone new, or just as a refresher, this means both practices come before qualifying, all on Saturday. Cars are then impounded(no adjustments) overnight with inspection Sunday morning before the race and targeted to be finished with around three hours to spare before the start of the race. Ultimately, for fantasy, this means we will not have an official starting lineup until completion of the inspection(approx 11:15 am ET).
With that in mind, let's take a look at some track history, track type history, form, and then dig into the picks.
Watkins Glen - Fort Worth, TX
Track - 2.45 Mile Road Course
Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota have dominated here lately starting with Martin Truex Jr. has finishes of 2nd, 1st, and 7th in his last three trips. His teammate, Kyle Busch, is the only active driver with multiple wins here at Watkins Glen and also returns with Top 10 finishes in four straight and 12 of his last 13 trips and has also led 20+ laps in each of the last two. No longer with JGR, Daniel Suarez has been here twice in a Cup car and finished Top 5(4th, 3rd) both times. Denny Hamlin had a long stretch of ugliness here at the Glen with nine straight races finishing 19th or worse before breaking through with his first career win in 2016 and followed it up with a 4th in 2017 and 13th last year. Finally, we have Erik Jones, who like Suarez, has Top 10 finishes in both of his two career starts here, one in the #77(Furniture Row Racing) and one in his first season in the #20(JGR).
Despite Hendrick Motorsports struggles, especially, Chase Elliott returns to Watkins Glen as defending champion after finishing 13th in his first two races here. In his first career Cup start here, William Byron started 16th, posted an average running position of 10th and ended up finishing 8th. Also posting a career-high last year, Alex Bowman's 14th place finish was also his first Top 25 at the track in three tries. This is one of the tracks that Jimmie Johnson has never won at and it has been even more of a struggle lately with three straight finishes of 29th or worse.
Looking at the drivers with at least nine starts here at Watkins Glen, Brad Keselowski sits third behind Busch and Truex with an 11.4 career average finish followed by Kevin Harvick(13.3), Clint Bowyer(14.0), Kurt Busch(16.2), and Joey Logano(16.3).
With the addition of the Charlotte Roval, we now have three very different road courses on the Cup circuit. While they are different, road course racing is a completely different animal so looking at drivers and teams who excel on these tracks is still very important when building your core driver list.
The first driver that pops off the page is Martin Truex Jr. who won the Sonoma race earlier this year and has three wins and a runner-up in his last five road course races and four wins for his career. Kyle Busch joins his teammate with four career road course wins and while the last one came back in 2015, he has finished 7th or better in nine of his last 10 road course races.
Clint Bowyer leads all active drivers with an 11.7 career average finish despite just one win and his teammate, Kevin Harvick, is the only other driver not named Truex or Busch with multiple wins here at the track and he also has the fourth-best career average finish(12.9) on the track type.
Despite small sample sizes, each of Daniel Suarez(12.7), Chase Elliott(12.9), Ryan Blaney(13.6), and Erik Jones(14.2) all sit Top 7 in career average finish on the road courses.
Kyle Busch/Martin Truex Jr/Denny Hamlin/Erik Jones
That's right. I am loading up on JGR cars this weekend for a couple of reasons. It starts with track history as Kyle Busch is the only active driver with multiple wins here, Truex returns with a win and a runner-up here in his last two trips, Hamlin won here in 2016 and followed it up with a 4th in 2017 before a 13th last year and Erik Jones has a 10th and 5th in his two career trips to the track.
Then we look at road course history and Busch and Truex have dominated with four wins apiece, Truex with three since the start of 2017. Looking at the results from the last two years of road courses, Denny Hamlin has two Top 10's and the fifth-best average finish(10.0) while Erik Jones has three Top 10's and a 30th at the Roval.
Finally, all four drivers ranked inside the Top 10 in opening practice which just wrapped up led by Kyle Busch who appears to have the best car here this weekend. The nice thing about these four drivers is that there are two in the elite tier of pricing and the other two are nicely placed in the mid-tier of pricing making for a ton of ways to construct lineups.
Kevin Harvick/Clint Bowyer/Daniel Suarez
The Stewart-Haas combo of Harvick, Bowyer, and Suarez are my top pivot off the JGR cars this week and should come a bit lower owned as well. Harvick has just one career win here but overall has been excellent on road courses with Top 10's in four straight nine of his last 11 with a win(Sonoma) and four Top 5's. Clint Bowyer could easily be the top PTS/$ play this week, especially on FanDuel at just $9K. He has yet to win here at Watkins Glen and has just one road course win but leads all drivers with a very impressive 11.7 career average finish on road courses over a very large 28 race sample size. Finally, we have Daniel Suarez who has raced here twice and finished Top 5 both times while not grabbing a Top 10 in any of his other four road course races in his career.
For the rest of my picks, be sure to grab a Members-Only copy of the cheatsheet, available in our premium chatroom. It will be updated following each practice and includes my notes as well. Cheers!
Below you will find a copy of my DFS NASCAR cheathsheet which includes Track History, Current Form, DraftKings points averages, Track Type History, Practice/Qualifying Ranks and much more.
Chris Durell has been playing Daily Fantasy Sports for five years and fantasy in general for more than a decade. He is an active player in NFL, MLB, NHL, 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.
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