Daily Fantasy NASCAR: Current Form, Track History, and Betting Odds for Saturday's Drydene 311
High-banked, concrete, and fast. That descriptor applies to only two tracks on the NASCAR Cup Series circuit. One of them is hosting a double-header this weekend.
That's up in Dover, where the Cup Series will run a pair of 311-lap races, one on Saturday and the other Sunday. On Sunday, we're going to know who will be fast because we will have seen drivers in largely the same cars literally the day before. Saturday, though, is less data-friendly.
The only other track on the schedule that checks the same boxes as Dover is Bristol. Although the Cup Series has run there twice this year, one of them was the All-Star Race. It's a special format, and there's no loop data to dig into there. We can check out the results, but it's not the most representative race, and not everybody in the field was involved.
As such, we have just one truly relevant race we can turn to when trying to judge who will be fast on Saturday. That's the points-paying race in Bristol shortly after the COVID-19 layoff. It took place a while ago, and team strengths have shifted since then, but it's still the best data we've got.
That Bristol race is, thus, included on the sheet below. It's one we'll want to focus on when picking drivers for our DFS lineups.
As always, though, the numbers listed there are each driver's average running position rather than their finish. Chase Elliott ($12,600) finished 22nd in that race, which would make you think it was a bad day. But he finished 22nd because he and Joey Logano ($11,500) made contact while fighting for the lead in the closing laps. Elliott's fourth-place average running position was the best in the race, and it's a much better representation of Elliott's strength that day. Elliott then went on to win the All-Star Race.
The other recent races listed are just the past five at non-road courses. You could make a case for looking at just the tracks using the 750-horsepower package that will be in place this weekend, but the others with those rules have all been at flat tracks. Dover is anything but. So, instead, we'll loop in tracks of all sizes to get a read on form as a whole as that does matter even at shorter tracks.
The track history section includes the past four Dover races. It's helpful because the track is unique, but there are two words of caution there.
The first is that some data can be irrelevant if drivers were in different equipment. For example, Matt DiBenedetto ($8,500) was with a putrid team in 2018 and thus had average running positions of 30th and 29th. In a slightly better ride last year, he cranked out a seventh-place finish in the fall, and he has jumped up a new level in 2020. That's a spot where you'll want to focus more on the current form.
The second is that none of the rookies have any Cup Series history here, but that shouldn't be taken to mean they're not relevant. Christopher Bell ($8,200) and Cole Custer ($8,400) combined to win three of the four Dover races in 2018 and 2019 (two for Bell, one for Custer), and they've been good enough in 2020 for us to expect them to run well this weekend.
The other data shown is each driver's FanDuel salary, win odds at FanDuel Sportsbook, and starting position. The win odds are in fractional form, so Martin Truex Jr. ($13,500) being listed at 3.9 means he is +390 to win.
| Current Form | Track History | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Driver | FD Salary | Win Odds | Starting | Mich 1 | Mich 2 | New Hamp. | Kansas | Texas | Bristol | 2019 Fall | 2019 Spring | 2018 Fall | 2018 Spring |
| Chase Elliott | $12,600 | 6 | 1 | 9 | 8 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 4 | 37 | 3 | 8 | 9 |
| Denny Hamlin | $13,000 | 6.5 | 2 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 9 | 5 | 2 | 19 | 10 | 12 |
| Martin Truex, Jr. | $13,500 | 3.9 | 3 | 14 | 20 | 9 | 4 | 17 | 12 | 3 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| Clint Bowyer | $9,700 | 47 | 4 | 8 | 14 | 11 | 17 | 17 | 13 | 13 | 9 | 5 | 8 |
| Joey Logano | $11,500 | 18 | 5 | 10 | 12 | 6 | 20 | 7 | 7 | 36 | 9 | 5 | 11 |
| Jimmie Johnson | $9,400 | 20 | 6 | 11 | 14 | 14 | 19 | 27 | 7 | 7 | 11 | 38 | 9 |
| Brad Keselowski | $12,000 | 14 | 7 | 20 | 6 | 2 | 4 | 11 | 7 | 11 | 7 | 5 | 3 |
| William Byron | $8,900 | 42 | 8 | 11 | 16 | 10 | 15 | 18 | 14 | 10 | 12 | 22 | 16 |
| Kurt Busch | $10,300 | 35 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 14 | 11 | 8 | 20 | 10 | 16 | 6 | 9 |
| Kevin Harvick | $14,000 | 3.9 | 10 | 4 | 2 | 10 | 6 | 8 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
| Alex Bowman | $10,000 | 31 | 11 | 20 | 10 | 17 | 12 | 13 | 28 | 6 | 7 | 14 | 20 |
| Chris Buescher | $6,200 | 200 | 12 | 20 | 25 | 24 | 27 | 17 | 24 | 27 | 23 | 25 | 20 |
| Erik Jones | $9,000 | 35 | 13 | 10 | 7 | 23 | 9 | 9 | 11 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 17 |
| Matt DiBenedetto | $8,500 | 55 | 14 | 7 | 20 | 9 | 21 | 11 | 25 | 12 | 19 | 29 | 30 |
| Michael McDowell | $5,500 | 200 | 15 | 29 | 26 | 24 | 24 | 23 | 20 | 25 | 24 | 27 | 25 |
| Tyler Reddick | $7,800 | 75 | 16 | 17 | 23 | 16 | 12 | 15 | 31 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Aric Almirola | $10,700 | 31 | 17 | 12 | 19 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 8 | 16 | 13 | 6 | 15 |
| Christopher Bell | $8,200 | 75 | 18 | 12 | 15 | 16 | 19 | 22 | 16 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. | $6,000 | 200 | 19 | 19 | 14 | 21 | 35 | 24 | 23 | 17 | 26 | 17 | 11 |
| Ryan Blaney | $11,000 | 19 | 20 | 22 | 7 | 13 | 6 | 5 | 25 | 16 | 10 | 9 | 7 |
| Cole Custer | $8,400 | 70 | 21 | 22 | 17 | 14 | 16 | 24 | 29 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Kyle Busch | $11,200 | 14 | 22 | 5 | 7 | 36 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 11 | 8 | 13 |
| Ryan Newman | $7,300 | 150 | 23 | 20 | 25 | 19 | 24 | 18 | 20 | 23 | 20 | 19 | 30 |
| Bubba Wallace | $5,500 | 200 | 24 | 18 | 16 | 22 | 27 | 20 | 17 | 22 | 28 | 26 | 25 |
| Ty Dillon | $4,000 | 200 | 25 | 24 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 24 | 32 | 21 | 21 | 29 | 26 |
| Matt Kenseth | $6,500 | 150 | 26 | 18 | 23 | 24 | 20 | 19 | 14 | -- | -- | 22 | -- |
| Ryan Preece | $4,000 | 200 | 27 | 25 | 25 | 16 | 27 | 28 | 22 | 19 | 27 | -- | -- |
| Daniel Suarez | $5,000 | 200 | 28 | 28 | 29 | 27 | 25 | 29 | 26 | 17 | 13 | 17 | 8 |
| Corey LaJoie | $3,500 | 200 | 29 | 23 | 26 | 32 | 25 | 23 | 27 | 30 | 29 | 32 | 37 |
| Brennan Poole | $3,000 | 200 | 30 | 32 | 32 | 29 | 35 | 32 | 30 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| John Hunter Nemechek | $5,000 | 200 | 31 | 28 | 25 | 24 | 18 | 24 | 16 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Austin Dillon | $7,000 | 100 | 32 | 22 | 17 | 17 | 23 | 14 | 14 | 20 | 18 | 13 | 27 |
| Timmy Hill | $3,000 | 200 | 33 | 38 | 36 | 33 | 38 | 37 | 27 | -- | -- | 38 | -- |
| J.J. Yeley | $3,000 | 200 | 34 | 31 | 30 | 30 | 28 | 29 | 32 | 32 | -- | 34 | -- |
| Quin Houff | $3,000 | 200 | 35 | 34 | 32 | 35 | 32 | 32 | 34 | -- | 36 | -- | -- |
| Reed Sorenson | $3,000 | 200 | 36 | 33 | 34 | -- | 32 | 33 | -- | 37 | 35 | -- | 33 |
| Josh Bilicki | $3,000 | 200 | 37 | 36 | -- | -- | 32 | 37 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Joey Gase | $3,000 | 200 | 38 | -- | 38 | 34 | 34 | 37 | 36 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Garrett Smithley | $3,000 | 200 | 39 | 36 | 36 | 33 | 32 | -- | 33 | 34 | -- | -- | -- |
| B.J. McLeod | $3,000 | 200 | 40 | -- | -- | -- | 39 | 37 | 32 | 32 | 36 | 35 | -- |
Although we want laps led out of our studs, we can afford to search for place-differential in the value plays. That puts Austin Dillon ($7,000) on the map.
Dillon is starting near the back because he missed last weekend's race due to a positive COVID-19 test. He has since been cleared to return, and his combination of form and track history is respectable enough to put him on the map. Dillon's a solid option if you need a salary-saver to jam more lap-leaders into your lineup.
