DraftKings NASCAR Strategy and Projections for Charlotte

These are my final thoughts and strategies to consider for Sunday night’s Coca-Cola 600 race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, as well as projected DraftKings FPTS for each driver. The chart below is explained but if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me. 

• The extra 100 miles at Charlotte this weekend should be taken into consideration when building your DraftKings lineups this weekend. At a 1.5-mile race track, that’s an extra 67 laps that the teams have to run, which means a potential 33 extra FPTS for fastest laps and 16.5 extra FPTS for laps led. Place differential FPTS are still important, but their importance gets a tiny downgrade this week.
• The extra length of this race also opens the door for more dominators. Unfortunately, races at Charlotte tend to be a ‘follow the leader’ type of event, so we probably won’t see many on-track passes for the lead, at least after the first 5 laps of the start of a run. Drivers that are good on restarts thus have a bit of an advantage, too.. *cough* Kyle Busch *cough*.
• Yet again, this weekend’s schedule produced some ‘grain of salt’ practice times. I don’t know about you, but practicing during the morning while we’re going to race in the afternoon heading into night doesn’t seem like it would translate very well. Also, remember that drivers that aren’t very fast to start the race could easily be there at the end challenging for the win.. *cough* Joey Logano *cough*
• Don’t be afraid to go top heavy with your DraftKings lineups this weekend. There are very few drivers between $7,000 and $9,000 that are worth a shot on Sunday, and when you have guys like Regan Smith, Michael McDowell, and Landon Cassill priced incredibly low–I’m not sure who does driver salaries for DraftKings, but they need to be evaluated–that opens the door to load up on two or three of the very high-priced drivers.

Projected Base FPTS at Charlotte

The following chart takes into account the very basics: the starting position and the projected finish of each driver. The projected finishes are averaged from five different ranking systems, using both mathematical equations as well as personal rankings. This chart also includes the average projected base DraftKings FPTS–which doesn’t take into account fastest laps or laps led points–as well as the dollar per FPT. I don’t try to project fastest laps or laps led–that’s up to you. You can click the headers below to sort the chart by that attribute. By default it is sorted by the average projected finish of the drivers.