It was smooth sailing in the race for the first 200+ laps of the 267-lap race. Then the wrecks and contact began. A “big one” involving seven cars happened with 30 or so laps left and it took them all off the track for good. Then a tire rub drove Ryan Blaney into Kyle Larson who subsequently had a tire issue with 14 laps left in the race and cost him what had been a great day. When all was said and done, Kevin Harvick took down his fifth victory of the season after a last lap pass, the first one ever at Kansas Speedway, to overtake Martin Truex Jr. Even with all the late-race craziness the lineups fared pretty well in the end and the playbook held out well for most of the race. Let’s see how those contests broke down.
DraftKings
$25K Happy Hour (20 entry max)
Entry fee - $1
Total prizes - $25,000 First place - $1,500
Total entries - 29,726 Places paid - 7,375
Top score - 378.75 Money line - 270.25 Fantasy Alarm Lineups - 284.74 GPP2; 279.50 Cash; 120.00 GPP 1
With a large-field GPP contest it was expected to see a fair amount of variation of drivers played but the max entry at 20, it would adjust the ownership rates up a bit in a contrasting effect. The top-70 lineups were exactly the same and posted an impressive 378.75-point score. Kevin Harvick was the highest owned driver (not surprisingly) at 55.27%. He was the pole sitter and showed dominant speed in practice. Clint Bowyer was the only other driver over the 50% owned mark in the contest, again making sense since he was starting near the rear of the field but had top-five speed in practice. His 47-point day helped bolster some rosters, but ultimately wasn’t quite as high as many (including me) thought he would produce. Only two drivers were over the 30% mark aside from those two in Matt Kenseth and Ryan Blaney. Kenseth was rostered on 36.94% again in a Bowyer type play as he was in the back of field and possessed big PD upside. Blaney (30.77%) started second and had a top-three long-run speed car in practice, and a cheaper price tag than Harvick. Matt DiBenedetto was a bit surprising as the fifth-highest played driver at 29.91%. All but nine of the top-150 lineups played DiBenedetto as their budget-option and the 37.5 points was a nice reward for someone in the $5K salary range. Two drivers I thought might be played more in Kyle Larson and Martin Truex Jr. were played on 25.48% and 21.13% respectively. Larson started P22 (but in the rear) and had a very fast car while Truex had been dominant on track a year ago. Both scored over 54 points, with Larson nearly doubling that total with 107.25 points to his credit. A few of my favorite plays of the week, Aric Almirola, David Ragan, and Ty Dillon all fell below 15% rostered at 14.46%, 7.22%, and 7.09% respectively. They had varying results with Almirola posting 30 points, Dillon -6 (as he was caught in the “big one”), and Ragan with 38. Paul Menard managed to be the best value on the board (highest points with lowest ownership) with his 44.5 points being on just 8.78-percent of lineups.
$10K Hot Rod (3 entry max)
Entry fee - $3
Total prizes - $10,000 First place - $500
Total entries - 3,963 Places paid - 1,073
Top score - 380.25 Money line - 273.00 Fantasy Alarm Lineups - 284.75 GPP 2; 279.5 Cash; 120.00 GPP 1
This contest was a smaller-field GPP than the one above, however it still had all 39 drivers rostered like the one above, despite two (Derrike Cope and Cody Ware) not racing on Saturday. The ownership rates were higher though. Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer were again the highest-owned guys at 61.54% and 61.06% respectively, both about 10-15 percent higher than the large-field GPP. Matt Kenseth was again the third-highest owned drivers but his rate ticked up to 41.48% even though his seven-point day didn’t pay off well for those who rostered him, including in my lineups. The next few are a bit different than above as Matt DiBenedetto moved up to fourth-highest at 37.19-percent followed by Michael McDowell and Kasey Kahne at just over 31-percent each. Ryan Blaney rounds out the group of racers who were over 30% owned and was there for good reason. Kyle Larson and Martin Truex Jr. went in different directions with Larson bumping up to nearly 29% while Truex fell slightly to 20.19%. Just ahead of Larson in ownership came Kyle Busch at a tick below 30% and he brought in 36 points, which was his third-worst total on the season. The favorite plays from above all held about the same in this contest with slight drops. The interesting trend in this contest was the lack of ownership of the Hendrick Motor Sports drivers as a whole. Jimmie Johnson, William Byron, Alex Bowman, and Chase Elliott were all under 11% owned with the first three between 10.95 and 10.04 and Elliott way down at seven percent. This race was at a track they have done well at previously and a distance they have competed well at for years, that shows how far off they are so far this year. I was off Denny Hamlin this week and apparently a lot of others were too as he was played on just 5.8% of rosters but still put up 44 points despite not showing great runs in practice or a great history here. So he provided the best sneaky value play in this contest.
NAS $2 50-50
Entry fee - $2
Total prizes - $90 1st-25th - $3.60
Total entries - 50
Top score - 341.5 Money Line - 336.5 Fantasy Alarm Lineup - 279.5 cash
The first thing to note about this contest is that it is a 50-50 not a double up, hence you win back slightly less than twice your money because the top half of the lineups are paid. Secondly upon looking at the results of the contest, you notice that 26 of the 50 entries were the exact same lineup, making it very hard to cash without that lineup or at least major parts of it. Only 29 of the drivers were played in this game, compared to the 39 available to you. Ownership rates were also ridiculously high, mainly due to so many of the same lineups being entered. Kevin Harvick once more led ownership rates at 96% (only two entries didn’t play him) and then followed Clint Bowyer at 90%. Kasey Kahne, Kyle Larson, and Matt Kenseth were all between 72-76 percent rostered despite there being 100-point difference between their outputs (Larson 107.25 and Kenseth 7). Matt DiBenedetto finished off the run of high-owned drivers at 68% played. Only three others cracked double-digits with Michael McDowell (30%), Daniel Suarez (22%), and Kyle Busch (14%) making the cutoff. Some surprises were seeing Martin Truex Jr. at just 2% owned and Aric Almirola at 2% owned being less owned than Joey Logano (4%) and Ross Chastain (4%).
FanDuel
$250 Small Bump n Run (5 entries max)
Entry fee - $1
Total prizes - $250 First place - $30
Total entries - 297 Places paid - 60
Top score - 338.10 Money Line - 312.10 Fantasy Alarm Lineups - 309.8 cash; 234.40 GPP
Several of the top spots in this contest were taken up by users entering the same lineup multiple times and they hit for the money. The key to placing high in this field was having Kevin Harvick (56.6%), Clint Bowyer (48.8%), and Kyle Larson (33%) on the roster. Those three combined for 222.1 points or 71% of the money line score with 60% of the roster spots accounted for. My example cash lineup finished it off with Matt Kenseth (13.5%) and David Ragan (11.8%) who posed 29.5 and 58.2 points respectively. The highest scoring roster also had Ragan but played Aric Almirola (25.6%) instead of Kenseth and the 56.2 points from Almirola made the difference. Making the money, 2.3 points more than the cash lineup produced, came down to playing Daniel Suarez (13.5%) and his 31.8 points instead of Kenseth’s 29.5.
NAS $5 Double-Up
Entry fee - $5
Total prizes - $250 1st-25th - $10
Total entries - 56
Top score - 338.10 Money Line - 304.40 Fantasy Alarm Lineups - 309.8 cash
As was to be expected the ownership rates went up with this contest and it showed immediately in the lineup with Kevin Harvick being played on 85.7% of rosters as his $13.5K salary wasn’t that prohibitive based on starting positions and values. Clint Bowyer once again followed close behind with his 61.7 points appearing on 82.1% of rosters in the double-up. Kyle Larson was the third key piece of the pie and he was on 50% of lineups. Once more Matt DiBenedetto was a popular play for a budget-guy at 33.9% ownership for his 52.8-point day. Michael McDowell and Kasey Kahne, both popular plays in DraftKings cash games, were also popular here with 30.4% rostering McDowell and 21.4% rostering Kahne. Both guys had nice nights with 55.5 and 52.9 points respectively. In a change of pace however, Alex Bowman was played pretty highly on FanDuel at 21.4-percent of rosters compared to the near constant single-digit plays on DK. The real value play in the contest came from David Ragan being owned by just 5.4-percent of people and producing 58.2 points at his $6,000 price tag.
Optimal Lineup
This is the highest-scoring lineup possible on DraftKings for this week:
| Optimal Lineup | ||
|---|---|---|
| Kevin Harvick | 11700 | 101.25 |
| Kyle Larson | 10600 | 107.25 |
| Joey Logano | 9900 | 50 |
| Paul Menard | 7000 | 44.5 |
| Michael McDowell | 5400 | 41.5 |
| Matt DiBenedetto | 5200 | 37.5 |
| Total | $50,000 | 382.00 |
You will notice that the two anchors of the lineup are Kevin Harvick and Kyle Larson both producing better than 100 points on the night. Interestingly the third and fourth drivers are two guys that weren’t talked about much this week in Joey Logano and Paul Menard but they gave 94.5 points to the lineup for an average of $8,450 in salary. The rest of the lineup is filled up with Michael McDowell and Matt DiBenedetto as the two budget plays. Clint Bowyer a favorite play this week lost out in the lineup because he put up 47 points compared to Logano’s 50. In terms of value ranks the lineup has the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 13 ranked FPPK values with Logano being 13th.