DraftKings NASCAR DFS Picks for Atlanta: Fantasy NASCAR DFS Strategy and Picks for the Ambetter Health 400

Atlanta Motor Speedway plays host to the second NASCAR Cup Series race of the 2024 season.

Like Daytona, this race will involve drafting with NASCAR using the same rules package from Daytona to Atlanta. However, we shouldn’t expect this to be a full-fledged Daytona race.

Daytona is a 2.5-mile track, but Atlanta is a 1.5-mile track with a narrower track width and slightly less banking. That means handling comes into play much more at a track like Atlanta and the draft just isn’t as big, making runs smaller and track even more important than at Daytona.

That said, good cars and good drivers can still work their way to the front, and the all-important strategy play is certainly possible to get a lesser car to the front of the pack.

Another big difference from Daytona is the fact that a dominator isn’t just possible, but it’s very likely at Atlanta. However, it’s normally just one dominator, so that’s the focal point of our lineup builds. One dominator, then the rest from a combination of finishing-position points and place-differential points.

Before we jump into my picks, don’t forget all my NASCAR projections can be found in the NASCAR Models on FantasyLabs, complete with floor, ceiling, median, and ownership projections.

Let’s not skip the best part — my Perfect% metric — a metric that tells you how often certain racers appear in the optimal lineup when running 10,000 race simulations.

And don’t forget about the tools that FantasyLabs has to offer, like our Lineup Optimizer to effortlessly create up to 300 lineups, or our Lineup Builder if you like to hand-build your lineups.

Here are my NASCAR DFS picks for the Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Atlanta DraftKings DFS Cash Game Strategy

For cash games, I’d actually prefer to go pretty chalky. Atlanta just hasn’t produced many incidents this weekend between the Truck and Xfinity series races, and those are the two lower series with younger, more inexperienced drivers.

I expect drivers to be able to draft forward, which still creates a chunk of the randomness element, but it’s not enhanced as much by crashes taking out a chunk of the field.

As a result, I’d look to play close to the optimizer optimal based off my projections.

Throw in one dominator, who is most likely to be Joey Logano, and you have a solid setup for your cash-game lineup.

Atlanta DraftKings DFS Tournament Picks

With as tame as Atlanta has been this weekend, I actually think going overweight on the uber-chalk may be the play. That’s where I’ll start out with my first pick.

Erik Jones ($8000): Jones starts at the tail end of the field, but he should have no issue moving through the field given how strong Toyota has looked at drafting tracks, as well as his own ability at these races.

Jones led 10 laps at the second Atlanta race under this configuration, and had a top-five average running position at the first of these new-style Atlanta races.

He also led the fourth-most laps in the Next Gen car at the big superspeedways prior to Daytona, and while he didn’t lead any in this year’s Daytona 500, his strong Daytona outing just furthered my thoughts on him at this track type.

Chase Elliott ($9800): If you listened to Denny Hamlin’s podcast, Actions Detrimental, he actually believed Chase Elliott had the strongest car among the Hendrick Motorsports quartet at Daytona.

That comes despite two of Elliott’s teammates — William Byron and Alex Bowman — finishing 1-2.

Elliott has dominated here at Atlanta before, with a perfect sweep of the stages and the race win in the second Atlanta race in 2022.

John H. Nemechek ($6200): I believe a lot of people will look toward Corey LaJoie in this price range, given how strong he’s finished in three of the four Atlanta races.

I think think people will look at Carson Hocevar, both as LaJoie’s teammate, but also as the driver in good enough equipment starting farthest back among the cheap tier.

That leaves Jones’ teammate John Hunter Nemechek as the one likely to be a little undervalued, so while I went chalky with both Jones and Elliott, I think a great differentiation spot may be to go relatively overweight on JHN while maybe going a tad under on LaJoie and Hocevar.

Drivers starting in the 20s: If you listened to the Stacking Dennys podcast, I talked about how there weren’t a ton of drivers starting in the 30s that make the optimal lineup at Atlanta. Certainly I think Jones does, and I prefer to be overweight on Nemecheck.

Aside from that though, there are a ton of strong driver and car combinations starting in the 20s. In addition to Chase Elliott, there’s Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Ty Gibbs, Brad Keselowski, Christopher Bell, and Ross Chastain who are either in high-level equipment or accomplished drafting-track racers. Fill out a chunk of your lineups with these guys.

Dominators: Like I said, we’ll almost surely need a dominator in our lineups, so here’s my model’s likelihood of dominance:

1. Joey Logano
2. Michael McDowell
3. Ryan Blaney
4. Kyle Larson
5. William Byron
6. Chris Buescher
7. Kyle Busch

To me, Logano and McDowell are both in solid spots to be the dominator, and you should mix both into your portfolio at near-optimal amounts.

However, I like Kyle Larson as kind of a sleeper pick here. People don’t really think of him as a dominator at these tracks, but given the 1.5-mile characteristics this has, and that Larson is the HMS car starting closest to the front, I can see going overweight on him as a strategy.

Similar for Kyle Busch, who got to experience the current form of Atlanta in the Truck Series on Saturday.

When using the FantasyLabs optimizer, be sure to set a hefty negative correlation between Logano and McDowell, or even better create a group where you use no more than one of McDowell, Logano, Blaney, Larson, Busch and Todd Gilliland for a chunk of your portfolio.

Atlanta DraftKings DFS Paul Menard Pick of the Week

Austin Cindric has a solid combination of low projected usage but upside.

Cindric is part of that Team Penske stable that’s shown a ton of speed so far early in 2024, and Cindric himself has a drafting-track win under his belt when he won the 2022 Daytona 500.

Denny Hamlin also said he thought Austin Cindric was one of the best pushers at Daytona, so if that continues we could see Cindric push himself forward and pull off a top-three finish that would likely get him in the optimal lineup if he finishes there.

I wouldn’t go crazy here, but rostering him right around his Perfect% will probably get you overweight on him, and I don’t mind being a touch higher.