NASCAR
Daily Fantasy NASCAR: Current Form, Track History, and Betting Odds for the YellaWood 500
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is starting in the back of the pack for Sunday's race, and he brings a plus history at Talladega. What other data should we know for NASCAR DFS in the YellaWood 500?

Even with the playoffs in full swing, our NASCAR DFS strategy for superspeedways remains unwavering: stack the back, baby.

As discussed in this week's track preview, playoff drivers don't monopolize the front of the finishing order in Talladega the way they do at other tracks. With all the playoff drivers starting in the top 12 spots on Sunday, this means we'll naturally have place-differential candidates starting deeper in the field who can pull through with big fantasy totals.

We just have to determine which drivers that will be.

That's where the data comes into play. The table below sorts the drivers by their starting position. You can start at the bottom and scroll up until you find someone who fits your fancy.

The main emphasis here should be the five races in Talladega and the two in the current form section at Daytona. Because superspeedway racing requires a different skillset than other tracks, some drivers run better here than they do elsewhere. The reverse is also true. There's definitely a difference between Daytona and Talladega, so we can't just simply lump them all together, but looking at Daytona races will be better than digging too much into what happened last week in Las Vegas.

As always, the number listed for each driver in those sections is their average running position rather than their finish. It's worth noting that data is a bit less valuable here than usual.

A good example of why comes from this spring's Talladega race. There, Aric Almirola ($10,700) and his Stewart-Haas Racing teammates hung out in the back for most of the day, trying to avoid trouble. That brought their average running position down. However, when the laps mattered, they leapt to the front. Kevin Harvick ($10,500) was leading on the last lap, and Almirola finished third, nearly winning the race backwards.

As a result, it can be helpful to dig into the finishes as well. At Racing Reference, we can see each driver's full history at Talladega, and we can also use their fantasy tool to see who has run best in the seven superspeedway races since the start of last year.

The other numbers listed are each driver's FanDuel salary and win odds at FanDuel Sportsbook. The odds are presented in fractional form, so Joey Logano ($11,600) being listed at 12 means he's +1200 to win.

Current Form Track History
Driver FD
Salary
Win
Odds
Starting Vegas
2
Bristol
2
Richmond Darlington
3
Daytona
2
Daytona
1
2020
1
2019
2
2019
1
2018
2
2018
1
Denny Hamlin $11,400 10 1 4 17 12 5 10 13 12 19 34 12 12
Kurt Busch $10,300 17 2 13 13 10 8 16 17 12 11 12 3 13
Martin Truex Jr. $10,000 24 3 7 21 6 3 12 22 24 31 10 26 25
Alex Bowman $8,600 18 4 6 13 8 8 15 14 11 22 9 12 12
Kevin Harvick $10,500 12 5 9 3 8 6 22 20 15 12 38 4 11
Kyle Busch $10,200 14 6 9 5 9 8 8 17 14 8 10 16 12
Brad Keselowski $11,200 11 7 14 18 3 17 19 11 8 10 10 12 14
Joey Logano $11,600 12 8 19 7 3 10 8 9 4 8 8 8 6
Clint Bowyer $9,000 34 9 11 10 11 11 21 28 21 13 32 4 27
Chase Elliott $11,800 11 10 4 4 7 5 16 11 22 11 10 12 13
Aric Almirola $10,700 14 11 15 10 9 13 25 16 20 14 8 5 14
Austin Dillon $8,000 34 12 13 14 6 13 24 16 22 12 13 20 20
Matt DiBenedetto $7,400 34 13 8 14 18 21 12 16 16 14 16 23 22
Ryan Blaney $12,000 13 14 8 14 19 22 13 12 6 9 9 9 12
Chris Buescher $5,500 44 15 18 16 24 21 18 13 15 18 19 22 19
Erik Jones $8,300 44 16 15 12 20 9 15 23 23 21 13 15 31
Jimmie Johnson $9,300 24 17 17 15 29 9 13 13 10 24 33 24 10
Cole Custer $7,200 44 18 17 21 12 17 19 24 12 -- -- -- --
Ryan Newman $7,600 70 19 20 26 20 20 19 13 26 22 19 27 17
Matt Kenseth $6,200 70 20 20 18 13 18 19 -- 29 -- -- -- --
William Byron $8,800 24 21 15 25 19 10 13 32 12 15 12 16 13
Christopher Bell $7,000 44 22 18 14 18 25 15 19 15 -- -- -- --
John Hunter Nemechek $5,000 85 23 19 20 28 28 14 23 18 -- -- -- --
Michael McDowell $4,500 85 24 18 20 25 23 15 23 21 18 38 34 19
Ryan Preece $6,400 100 25 25 19 23 23 25 21 18 26 21 -- --
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. $11,000 24 26 23 39 18 18 17 11 10 11 8 19 15
Bubba Wallace $6,600 31 27 25 17 24 29 15 26 15 28 38 19 14
Ty Dillon $6,000 100 28 25 22 26 26 19 15 19 15 15 19 24
Corey LaJoie $5,500 100 29 24 29 25 31 25 26 26 25 22 34 --
Tyler Reddick $9,600 34 30 29 10 16 18 16 18 13 -- -- -- --
Daniel Suarez $4,500 100 31 30 27 29 28 17 -- 27 14 16 12 17
Brennan Poole $4,000 100 32 31 -- 32 30 26 32 30 -- -- -- --
Quin Houff $4,000 100 33 35 31 33 34 32 33 35 -- -- -- --
J.J. Yeley $4,000 100 34 33 34 34 32 40 -- 39 -- -- 27 --
Joey Gase $4,000 200 36 36 36 37 36 37 34 36 34 -- 24 30
Timmy Hill $4,000 200 37 38 34 37 38 35 26 36 -- -- -- 36
James Davison $4,000 200 38 -- 34 36 38 35 -- -- -- -- -- --
Brendan Gaughan $5,000 100 39 -- -- -- -- 30 29 28 24 23 24 20


Based on this, a couple of back-stacking options should be obvious.

The first is Ricky Stenhouse Jr. ($11,000), who will start 26th. Stenhouse has a win and five top-fives in his past eight Talladega races, one of which was a runner-up back in the spring. He tends to be a volatile DFS play, but he has been far more stable at Talladega, where the wide straightaways can allow for some erratic driving. Stenhouse can certainly be a core play on Sunday.

Another option a couple of rows behind Stenhouse is Tyler Reddick ($9,600). Reddick's four superspeedway races in the Cup Series have been disappointing with no finishes better than 20th. Still, he won here in the Xfinity Series last year, and he won at Daytona in that series back in 2018. Starting back in 30th, Reddick's upside outweighs the concerns around his finishes on this track type.

It's also noteworthy that the winner of the August Daytona race -- William Byron ($8,800) -- will start 21st. Byron's finishes have been better in Daytona, but he was 11th here in the spring, and he has led at least 10 laps in three of his five career Talladega races. Getting Byron in the back half of the field is enough to make him a cash-game consideration at $8,800.

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