Daily Fantasy NASCAR Race Preview - Toyota Owners 400 DFSR is proud to bring you Chris Durell. He'll be bringing weekly NASCAR picks, analysis and breakdowns to help you cash on DraftKings. Playing other DFS sports? Now’s your chance to get DFSR PRO, which will give you access to our NBA optimizer, NBA Player Lab and our basic NHL projections! Get started for free by clicking the button below. START YOUR FREE TRIAL NOW! Want to learn some about NBA? Be sure to read our free NBA Ebook on building lineups, general strategy and more. We've got you completely covered.   Toyota Owners 400 Richmond International Raceway - Richmond, VA Track - .75 Mile Short Track 14° of Banking in the Corners We start out the week with some BIG breaking news. Dale Earnhardt Jr. announced on Tuesday that he will be retiring from the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series following the 2017 season.  While he has yet to win a Championship at the sports highest level, Earnhardt had a very impressive career that includes 26 wins...so far. He won at least one race in each of his first seven seasons including a career-high six wins in 2004. More than any of the wins or stats, Dale Earnhardt Jr. became the sports most popular driver and one hell of an ambassador. He may be done racing but you can count on Dale Jr. being around the race track for a very long time. I tweeted yesterday that I think he wins both Talladega races this season in his final season. It was #HotTakeTuesday but I don't think it is actually that far of a stretch to think he could win multiple times in the final 28 races of the season. It is going to be a fun ride. With the big news out of the way, the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup series rolls on to Richmond International Raceway for more short track racing. While it is in the same category(Short Track) as Bristol and Martinsville, it is far from the same configuration. While Bristol is a half-mile with heavy banking and Martinsville is a half mile with minimal banking, Richmond comes in at three quarters of a mile and is also flat with 14 degrees of banking. From a fantasy perspective, Richmond has been a dominator track as the laps led leader has led at least 140 laps in each of the last eight races here. The top two in laps led have also fared well with one of them winning each of the last five races and each having finished inside the Top 5 in six of the eight races. Another trend I noticed after adding each of the las four years full results...

Daily Fantasy NASCAR Picks for DraftKings - Food City 500 DFSR is proud to bring you Chris Durell. He'll be bringing weekly NASCAR picks, analysis and breakdowns to help you cash on DraftKings. Playing other DFS sports? Now’s your chance to get DFSR PRO, which will give you access to our NBA optimizer, NBA Player Lab and our basic NHL projections! Get started for free by clicking the button below. START YOUR FREE TRIAL NOW! Want to learn some about NBA? Be sure to read our free NBA Ebook on building lineups, general strategy and more. We've got you completely covered.     Food City 500 Bristol Motor Speedway - Bristol, TN Track - .533 Mile Short Track 24°-30° of Banking in the Corners Qualifying was rained out but the teams did manage to get in three practices including both final practices on Saturday morning. Before jumping into my favorite picks, make sure to go back and take a look at my Race Preview Article posted earlier this week. I go over some of my favorite trends and early picks. You can also check out my YouTube Channel where I post multiple videos for each race going over my spreadsheet and weights. Ok, let's not hesitate any longer and jump right into the picks.   Drivers to Build Around Kyle Busch DraftKings - $10,600 Practice 1 - 2nd Qualified - 7th Practice 2 - 1st Final Practice - 1st Final Pract 10 Lap Avg Rank - 4th Practice only solidified Kyle Busch as my top pick this week. Due to owners points setting the lineup, he will start seventh for the race giving him some place differential value. Looking at his final practice speeds(1st, 1st, 4th in 10 Lap avg), he will also provide a ton of dominator value as it shouldn't take long for him to reach the front of the field. He has been a big risk here lately with wrecks in three of his last four races at Bristol but the upside is jsut too much to avoid, especially as Kyle is chasing his first win of the season.     Erik Jones DraftKings - $7,800 Practice 1 - 1st Qualified - 14th Practice 2 - 2nd Final Practice - 16th Final Pract 10 Lap Avg Rank - 5th The rookie driver in the new #77 car of Furniture Row Racing has been very impressive early in his first season in Cup.  After being swept up in a crash at the Daytona 500, he rebounded with five straight Top 15 finishes including his first career Top 10 at Phoenix. HE will be making his first trip to Bristol in a Cup car but proved he can short track race...

Daily Fantasy NASCAR Race Preview - Food City 500 DFSR is proud to bring you Chris Durell. He'll be bringing weekly NASCAR picks, analysis and breakdowns to help you cash on DraftKings. Playing other DFS sports? Now’s your chance to get DFSR PRO, which will give you access to our NBA optimizer, NBA Player Lab and our basic NHL projections! Get started for free by clicking the button below. START YOUR FREE TRIAL NOW! Want to learn some about NBA? Be sure to read our free NBA Ebook on building lineups, general strategy and more. We've got you completely covered.   Food City 500 Bristol Motor Speedway - Bristol, TN Track - .533 Mile Short Track 24°-30° of Banking in the Corners The Easter break is over and the Monster Energy Cup Series travels to Thunder Valley for the Food City 500 this weekend. After last year's Bristol Night Race it is clear that the "Old Bristol" is back. The track team used a compound on the lower groove in all four corners and out of the straightaways to help with grip. They also used a process similar to what was used in Texas two weeks ago where they drag a bunch of tires on the track to help create grip. The drivers loved it as it created more options for passing, especially when it came to the slower lapped traffic. Last year's night race is 100% the best to go off of as rain had washed most of the grip off the track but the race was still very exciting overall. The biggest thing I will be paying attention to on Friday is the qualifying after the Texas Sh*t show. Nine drivers ended up missing qualifying, which by some could be viewed as an advantage as the cars get to start on fresh tires. Personally, I feel it has most to do with NASCAR tightening up their specs on the inspection process to eliminate advantages some teams were getting in the old process. If you fail at one of the inspection stations you now have to start right at the beginning of the line rather than make a few adjustments and go back to the same station. Time will definitely tell but you can expect NASCAR to nip any shady work in the butt if they decide there is any. Before getting into my early week picks, let's take a look at some of the top trends from Bristol Motor Speedway.     Top 5 Track History at Bristol Motor Speedway (2 Year)   Just like last week, we see the top of the current track history ranks filled with Hendrick Motorsports drivers Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr, and Chase Elliott. All three have...

Daily Fantasy NASCAR Picks for DraftKings - O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 DFSR is proud to bring you Chris Durell. He'll be bringing weekly NASCAR picks, analysis and breakdowns to help you cash on DraftKings. Playing other DFS sports? Now’s your chance to get DFSR PRO, which will give you access to our NBA optimizer, NBA Player Lab and our basic NHL projections! Get started for free by clicking the button below. START YOUR FREE TRIAL NOW! Want to learn some about NBA? Be sure to read our free NBA Ebook on building lineups, general strategy and more. We've got you completely covered.     O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 Texas Motor Speedway - Fort Worth, TX Track - 1.5 Mile Quad Oval Intermediate Track 20° - 24° Banking in the Corners If you haven't already, be sure to go check out my  DFS NASCAR Race Preview article for all the top trends and stats. If you missed qualifying you are probably wondering why there are nine drivers without a time posted, starting from the back. Well, it was another crazy Friday afternoon at the tech inspection area as none of those drivers made it through. This changes the strategy from a DFS perspective as there are so many high-end drivers with elite place differential value. If you are a contrarian type player, it will be a great week to find so low ownership by fading some of the place differential value. Fading it completely would be a mistake, however, so pick and choose wisely. Let's jump into the picks.     Drivers to Build Around Kyle Busch DraftKings - $9,900 Practice 1 - 19th Qualified - 34th Practice 2 - 18th Final Practice - 8th The #18 was one of the nine cars to miss inspection and will start 34th on Sunday. Before qualifying started, Kyle was my favorite driver coming into this week and this solidifies it. After a rough start to the season, Kyle has put together three straight Top 10 finishes including a runner-up last week at Martinsville. He now comes back to Texas, a place he has been dominant at lately. He won this race last spring and has finished Top 5 in five straight and seven of his last eight Texas races. On top of all that, his salary has dropped below $10K. He is safe in all formats.     Jimmie Johnson DraftKings - $9,700 Practice 1 - 14th Qualified - 24th Practice 2 - 15th Final Practice - 1st I am not 100% but I have a good feeling Jimmie will be a low owned contrarian option this week. He made it through the first round of qualifying but had to change tires and as a result,...

Daily Fantasy NASCAR Race Preview - O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 DFSR is proud to bring you Chris Durell. He'll be bringing weekly NASCAR picks, analysis and breakdowns to help you cash on DraftKings. Playing other DFS sports? Now’s your chance to get DFSR PRO, which will give you access to our NBA optimizer, NBA Player Lab and our basic NHL projections! Get started for free by clicking the button below. START YOUR FREE TRIAL NOW! Want to learn some about NBA? Be sure to read our free NBA Ebook on building lineups, general strategy and more. We've got you completely covered.   O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 Texas Motor Speedway - Fort Worth, TX Track - 1.5 Mile Quad Oval Intermediate Track 20° - 24° Banking in the Corners After an exciting caution filled Martinsville race, the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup series moves on to Texas where everything is bigger! Drivers and teams will face something new this time around at Texas Motor Speedway as the track just completed a repave less than a month ago. The track has always been one that took forever to dry in the event of rain so they did some work to the drainage as well as some other big changes that will most definitely affect the racing. I found some footage on YouTube of a pace car ride that Chris Buescher took after the repave and he went over some of the changes. It is a seven-minute video talking about banking, pavement and track conditions so if you aren't a nerd like me, I will sum it up for you. They took the banking in turns one and two down from 24 to 20 degrees and also widened those corners from 60 - 80 feet wide. This was in an attempt to create some more passing zones as the track is one of the fastest non-plate tracks on the circuit and can sometimes see a leader get way out in front on a green flag run. This now adds another element of the setup for the crew chief and team as one setup won't be perfect both ends of the race track. It will also create some crazy restarts as drivers now have an added 20 feet of track going into turn one. Add that to the already crazy restarts from the stage racing, and we could be in for a very exciting race on Sunday. Below is a video of soem the press conference snippets from Track owner Eddie Gossage on the reasons for the track repave.   Without any testing prior to this week drivers and teams really only have the Buescher YouTube Vidoe for research on the new pave. A couple days ago we...

Daily Fantasy NASCAR Picks for DraftKings - STP 500 DFSR is proud to bring you Chris Durell. He'll be bringing weekly NASCAR picks, analysis and breakdowns to help you cash on DraftKings. Playing other DFS sports? Now’s your chance to get DFSR PRO, which will give you access to our NBA optimizer, NBA Player Lab and our basic NHL projections! Get started for free by clicking the button below. START YOUR FREE TRIAL NOW! Want to learn some about NBA? Be sure to read our free NBA Ebook on building lineups, general strategy and more. We've got you completely covered.     STP 500 Martinsville Speedway - Martinsville, VA Track - .526 Oval Short Track 12° Banking in the Corners If you haven't already, be sure to go check out my  DFS NASCAR Race Preview article for all the top trends and stats. First thing to note from the weekend is that Qualifying was rained out on Friday and the starting order was set by owner's points(refer to my cheatsheet). No worries, however, for the rest of the weekend as the forecast calls for Sunny conditions and a high of 68° F. The qualifying set by points gives a big advantage to those drivers and teams who have started the year out hot, specifically Kyle Larson who will get the #1 pit stall this week. While some teams are loving the rainout, others will have some work to do on Sunday. The most notable at a disadvantage are Matt Kenseth(25th), Dale Jr(21st), Jimmie Johnson(17th) and AJ Allmendinger(30th). I mention it being a disadvantage as it is very hard to pass here at Martinsville and cars can go a lap down very fast with it being a short track. I would suggest not using more than two of these drivers who are starting back in the field in your lineups as the risk would be very high.   Drivers to Build Around Kyle Busch DraftKings - $10,300 Practice 1 - 2nd Qualified - 10th Practice 2 - 8th Final Practice - 2nd He is the defending champion of the spring race here at Martinsville and looks like one of the dominant cars again this year. Qualifying being canceled put the #18 back in the 10th starting position which is not that bad as it gives Kyle some place differential upside. He was 8th in second practice and improved to 2nd in final practice to go along with the fastest 5, 10, 15, and 20 lap averages. The #18 M & M's Toyota is my pick to win!     Brad Keselowski DraftKings - $9,500 Practice 1 - 13th Qualified - 4th Practice 2 - 1st Final Practice - 4th The #2 car of Brad Keselowski...