DraftKings NASCAR Driver Point Projections: Talladega GEICO 500

Talladega Superspeedway is the site of this weekend’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race, and for some DFS players, that scares them away from playing as much as normal (if at all). The races at Talladega and Daytona require you to play with a completely different strategy, as place differential points are at an absolute premium in these races. Additionally, while you usually use most or all of your $50,000 salary cap in other weeks, chances are the top lineups won’t even come close to hitting that limit. Personally, I take the starting lineup for the race and build rosters mainly with drivers starting 20th or worse, and maybe sprinkle in a couple of guys starting in the teens.

As far as dominator points, you can kind of keep laps led in your mind when building your lineups, but I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on that. Think of it this way: for every four laps that a driver up front leads, him losing one position wipes those out (in case you were still thinking of going heavy on guys that qualified up front). Sunday’s GEICO 500 is only 188 laps in length, which equates to just 47 extra FPTS in DraftKings. And when it comes to fastest laps, pretty much every car in the field is going to post at least one fastest lap this weekend thanks to restrictor plates, and I’d be surprised if anyone had more than ten.

Driver Point Projections for the Talladega GEICO 500

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 + laps led as well as the dollar per FPT. You can click the headers below to sort the chart by that attribute. By default it is sorted by average projected FPTS.