DFS NASCAR: Daytona 500 Contest Analysis

What a crazy race that was, even by Daytona standards. Sure, it seemed like smooth sailing for much of the race but then the aggression took over with 20 laps to go and all heck broke loose. First with a 21-car pileup and then a couple other smaller crashes. All-in-all only a handful of cars were left without damage but race’s end and only 20 cars altogether were left on the track in some form or fashion. The general strategy for the race was to load up on guys starting in the back of the pack and get one or two from the top-15 or so starting spots. Let’s see how that played out.

DraftKings

Large-Field GPP

In the $30K Happy Hour contest that had 35,671 entries in it with a 20-entry limit per user, no one managed to crack the 50% owned mark and every driver was played at least once, including both Joey Gase and Ryan Truex who didn’t actually qualify for the race. As I stated in the playbook, Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski were the highest owned guys considering they were starting P31 and P35 respectively and each had had solid success in past races. Busch was played in 48.1% of lineups while Keselowski was in 44.4% which was still 12 percentage points higher than the next highest owned driver. Kyle Larson was surprisingly the third-highest owned driver coming in at 32.2% even though he was forced to start in the back of the pack but still counted as starting P26. The drivers I had suggested to fade the most, Kevin Harvick and Chase Elliott, were owned at 28.1% and 22.18% and those that decided to pair them together for the race got a grand total of 27 points from them (Harvick -4 and Elliott 31) which is quite a spend up to get not a lot of points. Michael McDowell was the highest-owned cheap play of the week coming in at just over a quarter of the lineups playing him, which made sense given his very well-documented success at plate tracks and his P34 starting spot that turned into a fifth-place finish in the end. The best value of the field in this contest was the Watermelon Farmer, yes that’s what he does in his time off the track, Ross Chastain who was only played by 5.5% of people but earned 62 points thanks to his 10^th place finish and given his $4,800 price tag he returned a crazy 13X value.

Large-Field Cash

The single-entry Double-Up I’m referring to had 2,873 entries in it with the top-1,250 spots getting twice their entry fee paid out. Once again, every driver, including the two not racing, were played at least once in this double-up contest but unlike the GPP, two drivers broke the 50%-owned barrier in Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski who were played by 58% and 53.6% of people respectively. Kyle Larson, Michael McDowell, and Kevin Harvick rounded out the drivers over the 30% mark at 33.3, 31.9, and 30,4 respectively which is a bit surprising for both Larson and Harvick to be that highly-owned in a cash format. The two favorite plays in the playbook were Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin heading into the race and Logano was play nearly 2.5x more in this contest than Hamlin at 24.1% to 10.3% which are both a bit shocking compared to Larson and Harvick. The best value once more was Ross Chastain but this time he was played on just 2.26% of rosters or 63 of the 2,873 entered got the 13x value play into their lineup.

Optimal DraftKings Lineup

The best possible score you could have achieved for DraftKings while staying under the $50,000 salary cap was a very high 409.75. Interestingly the remaining salary is only $3,700 compared to the $5K to $10K that is usually left for the highest scoring lineup in restrictor plate races. All of the drivers that scored 60 or more points on Sunday comprise the lineup as position differential played a very big role in boosting the score since all but one of them started 26^th or worse. They also comprised six of the top-10 finishers in the race which isn’t shocking since only 14 cars were on the lead at race’s end. In the cash tournament the best score was six points shy of perfect and in the GPP one person posted a 406.75 coming just three points shy of perfect. The average value of the lineup was 8.84 (409.75/($46,300/1,000))

FanDuel

Large-Field GPP

The Intimidator on FanDuel had 23,809 total entrants and was a multiple-entry setup at $5 per entry with $20K going to first place. Like on DK, the top-two owned drivers were Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch with Keselowski at 46.5% and Busch at 43.1% mostly due to the fact that a ton of people enter the contest and had exactly the same lineup, which is typical in these kinds of contests. Joey Logano was highly-owned at 35.6% and a lot of people paired both Keselowski and Logano together even with them being the highest-priced drivers on the board this week. The eventual race winner in Denny Hamlin comes in at 18% rostered as the second-highest scorer of the week on the site. A driver that we had hyped pre-race, in Ryan Blaney, was decidedly less played than his Penske teammates at just 19.3% in this contest but he was more highly-owned that Kyle Larson at 16.9%. In fact the driver who wound up finishing third, Erik Jones, was only played at 18.7% which is also surprising since he won the race the last time it was held at the track back in July. Michael McDowell was again the most popular cheap driver (less than $6,500) at 15.2% played as he tied with Hamlin for second-highest scoring honors. One last driver to highlight is my contrarian play of the week, Jimmie Johnson, who was played on 19.9% of rosters in this one.

Cash Contest

FanDuel cash contests are generally smaller for single-entries than they are on DraftKings but even so, cash contests still showed high ownership of Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski once again with them cracking over 67% each which was a huge gap over the next highest-owned driver. Michael McDowell was the third-highest owned racer at 39.3% coming in six percentage points higher than both Erik Jones (33.9) and Joey Logano (33). In a surprise once more Kevin Harvick (25.9%) and Chase Elliott (21.4) were both owned at higher than 20 percent in cash lineups despite their respective lack of success at tracks of this nature and their relatively high starting spots. A guy who had nothing to lose in terms of position differential points in Casey Mears was rostered in 22.3% of lineups in this contest which was nearly double the ownership of Denny Hamlin (11.6) who was one of the pre-race favorites starting in the 10^th spot. The best value in the cash contest however has to go to Ryan Preece and his 60.2 points were on just .9% of lineups meaning just one or two people in the 112-entry field played the rookie driver who finished P6 and dodge wrecks with an enormous amount of luck.

Optimal FanDuel Lineup

The best score possible on FanDuel while being under the salary cap was a 357.2 while spending just $40,500. That is a more typical result at these tracks as that works out to an average value of 8.19 (357.2/($40,500/1000)). If you’ll notice it was very similar to the optimal lineup on DraftKings save for the fact that Kyle Larson isn’t in it this time. The three JGR drivers make the cut as do Michael McDowell and Ross Chastain and Chastain returned a remarkable 16X value in Sunday’s race. They also represent the five highest-scoring drivers on FanDuel this week and four of them started 28^th or further back with only Denny Hamlin starting in the top-10. The closest anyone came was in the large-field GPP with a score of 356.7, just a half-point shy by playing Kyle Larson instead of Chastain.