Well, we can’t always get our fades of the week right and this was one of those weeks with Denny Hamlin overcoming two separate pit penalties and missing pit road once to lock down the second victory of the year in 2019. Overall though it was a fairly pass-happy race with numerous cars moving up through the field and there being 13 lead changes. Ultimately laps led was not a big factor like I had mentioned in the podcast, with the most in the category being 66 of Kyle Busch who wind up finishing P10. Now let’s take a look at how the ownerships played out across the sites and contests for Sunday’s race at Texas.

DraftKings

Large-Field GPP

The “$30K Happy Hour” contest will be the basis for the large-field GPP ownerships with there being 35,671 entries in the field and the top-9,250 finishing positions being paid. It is really no surprise that the highest-owned driver was Kurt Busch at 47.8-percent with his P30 starting spot, 9.5K salary, and his Saturday practice speeds but it is a bit surprising that he didn’t crack the 50-percent mark. The second, and only other driver over 40-percent owned was Kevin Harvick at 40.6-percent. He hasn’t been dominant this season, but he had nine-straight top-10s here and started P23 leading to potential position upside at a still discounted $10,700 price tag. Aric Almirola and Jimmie Johnson were the only two to make it over 30-percent at 37.3 and 34.7 respectively. Almirola was a great GPP play given his success this season but so-so success at Texas recently while Johnson was on the pole and had a fast car all weekend. Almirola was a position play with Johnson being a laps-led dominator candidate. Seven drivers came in between 28.4-percent (Kyle Busch) and 21.2-percent (Clint Bowyer) with a few surprises in the mix. Matt DiBenedetto, Alex Bowman, and Ryan Preece all fell into that zone while putting up 18, 36.5, and 27.5 DK points respectively and surprises for a few reasons. Bowman was in a backup car but scored from P24 while starting in the rear and DiBenedetto and Preece showed only so-so speed in race practice while having little positive history at the track. In general, this range of drivers possessed two of the highest scoring ones in Busch and Bowyer and one of the lowest scoring ones in Kyle Larson, who at 26.4-percent owned posted a -11.5-point day when he caught fire on pit road. Nearly half the field, 16 drivers, were rostered on between 19.1 and 10.4-percent of rosters in this contest. This included all three Team Penske drivers in Ryan Blaney (15.3-percent), Brad Keselowski (13.5-percent), and Joey Logano (11.5-percent) who all had underwhelming days at Texas, though two of them were due to mechanical failures in the cars. The eventual race-winner in Denny Hamlin came in at 12.6-percent with his 73.25 points bolstering lineups. His teammate, Erik Jones, was the lowest owned JGR car at 12.3-percent with his third-straight fourth-place finish at the track bringing in 58 points. The best value play of the contest was perhaps William Byron, whose 45.75 points were on 9.3-percent of rosters. All 40 drivers were played including Cody Ware who didn’t actually race.

Large-Field Cash

The “Single Entry $3 Double Up” is the basis for the large-field cash analysis. There were 1,149 entries with the top-500 finishing positions being paid twice their entry fee. The same two drivers were once more the highest-owned in this contest with Kurt Busch making a staggering 66.7-percent of lineups and Kevin Harvick on 60.1-percent. Aric Almirola was the third-highest owned driver at 54.9-percent following in line with the above contest and for the same reason. However, after there was a huge drop-off in ownership. Surprisingly, Matt DiBenedetto was next at 35.9-percent with Clint Bowyer following as the only other driver over 30-percent at 30.6-percent specifically. Interestingly, Jimmie Johnson was played on more than a quarter of lineups (26.9-percent) which is a bit odd at an intermediate track in a cash game format. Kyle Larson, Kyle Busch, Alex Bowman, and Chase Elliott rounded out the drivers over 20-percent ownership which were all solid plays aside from Larson’s -11.5 points due to the fire on pit road that ended his day. Another eight drivers were rostered between 15.9 and 10.3-percent with five of those being budget plays in Chris Buescher, Parker Kligerman, Paul Menard, Ty Dillon, and Ross Chastain with most of those scoring between 21 and 24 DK points. Perhaps scared off by Saturday’s speed, Martin Truex Jr. was owned at just 8.2-percent despite starting P20 and having a good history. Just below him on the ownership was Denny Hamlin at a tick over eight percent. It was close but, William Byron is once again the best value play at 6.4-percent owned and 45.75 DK points on the day. Once more, all 40 drivers were played with Cody Ware appearing on five rosters.

Optimal DraftKings Lineup

Optimal Lineup  
Denny Hamlin$9,80073.25
Clint Bowyer$8,90077.25
Erik Jones$8,20058
Jimmie Johnson$8,00057
Daniel Suarez$7,50056.75
William Byron$7,30045.75
Total$49,700368.00

For the first time this season, the optimal lineup on DraftKings is much more of a balanced construct than a stars-and-scrubs one. No driver cost more than $10K but no driver cost less than $7.3K. Here is the surprising part of the lineup though, four of the drivers started inside the top-10 starting spots and the other two started P11 (Erik Jones) and P25 (Clint Bowyer). The reason why the other drivers who started further back didn’t make the cut is that the cheap drivers didn’t perform very well so the scoring wouldn’t have been as high with a stars and scrubs approach. In the contests that I played, the closest anyone got was 364.75 points.

FanDuel

Large-Field GPP

The “$5K Go-Kart” contest is the basis for this contest with its 23,952 entries and paying out to the top 5,500 finishing positions. Kurt Busch was the highest-rostered driver at 42.5-percent in this contest which again makes sense especially given FanDuel’s scoring system favoring position differential over anything else. Kyle Busch was the next most-popular play at 31-percent owned as he went for a weekend sweep on Sunday. Kevin Harvick was played in 30.3-percent of lineups mainly because of his position differential upside with starting 23rd. The pole-sitter, Jimmie Johnson, was played on 27.7-percent of lineups in this contest as a shot to lead a ton of laps and it paid off with a 73.4-point day on the site. Aric Almirola and Clint Bowyer were also both owned at higher than 20-percent at 24.5-percent and 21-percent respectively. Kyle Larson wound up burning…excuse the pun…the 19.2-percent of entries that played him while the Hendrick Motorsports combo of Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman, both owned at 15.4-percent and 18.7-percent respectively, each put up 59.9 and 59.3 FD points respectively. The four drivers that finished in the top four of the race in Denny Hamlin, Clint Bowyer, Daniel Suarez, and Erik Jones were all owned between 17 and 11 percent and all put up between 85.2 and 72.8 FD points.

Cash Contest

As a form of habit, I don’t play large-field cash contests on FanDuel since most of them are multi-entry and I hate multi-entry cash contest. It defeats the purpose of cash contests. The contest that is being used for this analysis is a 112-entry single-entry five-dollar double-up that paid the top-50 finishing positions. It’s a growing theme, but once more Kurt Busch is the highest played driver in this contest at 68.8-percent because of his whopping position upside. There was a decent gap down to Kevin Harvick at 54.5-percent again with Harvick starting P23 his position upside was too hard to pass up in this format. Continuing in the SHR run, Clint Bowyer was played on 33.9-percent of lineups followed closely by his garage-mate in Aric Almirola at 29.5-percent both starting in the 20s and finishing in the top-10 by race’s end. The favorite heading into the race in Kyle Busch was owned at 27.7-percent, likely down due to his price tag which was sky high this week. A surprising ownership rate was both Matt DiBenedetto at 29.5-percent and Alex Bowman at 21.4-percent despite him being in a backup car and starting from the rear but being scored from his qualifying spot. Kyle Larson made 18.8-percent of people’s cash lineups in this contest even with his up-and-down finishing history here. Even with FanDuel’s propensity for weighting position points higher than laps led, Jimmie Johnson was still on 20.5-percent of rosters while the second favorite of the week in Brad Keselowski was on just eight percent of lineups. Eventual race winner Denny Hamlin was on 9.8-percent of lineups at his $11.5K salary this week. It’s hard to judge the best values on FanDuel because of the laps completed points giving everyone solid floors.

FanDuel Optimal Lineup

Optimal Lineup  
Denny Hamlin$11,50083.4
Clint Bowyer$10,80085.2
Erik Jones$10,20076.9
Jimmie Johnson$9,30073.4
Daniel Suarez$8,10072.8
   
Total$49,900391.70

This might be a first for this season as well for the FanDuel as the optimal lineup had the top-five finishers in the race. It was once more a mid-tier-based construct with the range between all five drivers being $3,400 and the point range being from 85.2 to 72.8. The value across the lineup is 7.84 with the best value coming from Daniel Suarez at nearly 9x for his $8,100 salary. It is interesting to note that while position differential is prioritized in the scoring on FanDuel, only one of the five drivers started outside the top-11 starting spots in Clint Bowyer and once more that’s simply due to the fact that the stars and scrubs approach didn’t pay off as well given the exorbitant price tags on guys starting far back like Kevin Harvick and even Kurt Busch who would’ve been the fourth- and fifth-highest scoring drivers in this lineup but the most and second-most expensive drivers in the lineup.