NASCAR will make history tonight when they compete in the first Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum. The field has been set through the four heat races and the Last Chance Qualifying Race. 23 drivers will run 150-laps to see who can win the first trophy in Los Angeles.
Practice Speeds
We cannot learn a lot from practice by looking at the single-lap speed. Finding out which drivers have the fastest cars when they run eight minute practice sessions and the track continues to change. In order to find the true speed of the drivers I incorporated all of their lap-times to see which drivers had a car that was consistently fast. The cars at the top of this chart should be the fastest Sunday evening. Here are all of the practice speeds….
Busch Light Clash Model
Each week I post my DFS prediction model. I enter all of the necessary data to figure out the best values for the race. This week I used the Driver Rating from Martinsville (since that is the most similar track to the L.A. Coliseum, practice speed, long-run speed from practice and the driver’s starting position in the race (starting position tells how well the driver ran in the qualifying races. It will be updated after the heat races). Here is the model for the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum…
DraftKings Strategy
The Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum will be 150 laps (37.5-miles in length). That means there will be 37.5 points available for leading laps and 67.5 points available for fastest laps (105 dominator points). The drivers who start up front will score most of the dominator points, but they will be very popular too.
The secret to winning your DFS contest this week is not tough to figure out. All of the driver are going to have some ownership since there are only 23 cars in the field. Finding the drivers with the least ownership and hoping they survive until the end of the race is going to be the winning strategy in DFS. It is going to take as much luck as skill Sunday evening.
The drivers who will be highly owned include: Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson, Kyle Busch, Tyler Reddick, Justin Haley and Daniel Suarez. My strategy Sunday evening will be to either fade all of these drivers hoping there is a major wreck at the front of the field, or to select one of these drivers and hope he leads all of the laps.
Some of the drivers who looked good in practice that may not have the ownership of the drivers list above include: Ryan Blaney, Kevin Harvick, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Kurt Busch, Chase Briscoe, Ryan Preece, AJ Allmendinger and Landon Cassill. I will likely own these drivers in tournament contests “if” they make the feature race. I am also interested in Denny Hamlin, although he looked like crap on Saturday.
I will also play this race like a Superspeedway race. I will select a lot of the drivers starting in the back and hope they score some place differential points. These drivers should have lower ownership and they will not hurt our lineup as much if they get wrecked. I am hoping AJ Allmendinger, Ryan Preece, Ty Dillon, Cole Custer or Todd Gilliland make it to the feature race through the Last Chance Qualifying race. If they do, they will be low owned and have some upside.
* Do not be afraid to leave a lot of salary on the table this evening. DraftKings made the salary low this week to ensure we could easily build lineups, just in case many the bottom 13 drivers in salary did not qualify for the race (If that were to happen, there would have been a lot of duplicate lineups if DraftKings did not relax the salaries a bit this week).
I will update the lineups after the Last Chance Qualifying race. Here are examples of lineups for the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum…
DraftKings Safe Lineup
* Lineup created using the data from the model. Lineup will likely be very popular and best used for Cash Contests (50/50, Double-Ups and Head-to-Head Contests)
DraftKings Contrarian Lineup
* Lineup using drivers who likely will not be very popular but offer a lot of upside to help you win your Tournament Contest. There are going to need to be a lot of wrecks for this lineup to workout.
FanDuel Safe Lineup
* There are only 15 dominators points available in FanDuel so it will be a good idea to select drivers who start in the back so you have a chance to score a lot of place differential points.
FanDuel Contrarian Lineup
If you need any further advice with your team, look for me on Twitter @MrFantasyNASCAR
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