DraftKings NASCAR DFS Picks for Daytona: Fantasy NASCAR Strategy and Picks for the Daytona 500

The NASCAR Cup Series is back!

Today’s Daytona 500 is sure to be a drama-filled event. Drivers expect plenty of intensity and daring moves late, which should lead to some chaos and mayhem.

And that’s where we benefit.

You see, predicting the finishing order of the Daytona 500 is next to impossible. Even the most accurate statistical models can only forecast finishing order to about 10-15% accuracy.

However, we can predict human behavior much, much better.

Thus, my approach to superspeedways is to find the key leverage spots and go underweight on drivers that will be rostered too much. The opposite is true of lightly-utilized drivers. I’ll want to be overweight on them when constructing a tournament portfolio.

With all that in mind, I’ll give you my favorite over- and under-weight plays for today’s DraftKings Millionaire Maker contest.

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 150 lineups, or our Lineup Builder if you like to hand-build your lineups.

Here are my NASCAR DFS picks for today’s Daytona 500.

Daytona DraftKings DFS Cash Game Picks

For cash games, I use a very simple approach. Pick the drivers that are likely to avoid incident and start in the back.

Yes, that means you can roster the Cody Wares of the world. In fact, he’s one of my favorite cash-game plays, simply because we know he’s going to lay back and wait for the carnage to happen in front of him.

If, and most likely when, it does, he’ll be there to drive on by and pick up significant place differential.

In addition to Ware, I suggest just loading up on guys in good equipment starting in the back. That means I’m fine if you roster anyone other than Conor Daly who starts in the back quarter of the field.

Daytona DraftKings DFS Millionaire Maker Picks

Overweight Plays:

1. Justin Haley ($5600): Haley’s usage projects at 9.1% in my model, and while I think he does go higher than that, it seems that he’ll be capped in the mid-teens based off historical data. But Justin Haley is an incredible superspeedway racer, with multiple wins in the Xfinity Series. He also has teammate A.J. Allmendinger starting one spot behind him, so they should be able to work together nicely. I project Haley ends up in the optimal lineup 21.7% of the time. That puts him No. 1 in my personal leverage score. That means I like going even more than the optimal suggests and playing him in about 25-30% of your rosters.
2. Ty Dillon ($4800): The younger of the two Dillon brothers, Ty projects to be in about one-fifth of all lineups in the Milly Maker. That’s just too low for a guy who has a solid superspeedway history of avoiding incidents and putting together frequent top-12 finishes. If he does that again from the 37th starting spot, those 25 place differential points will come in handy. While Dillon only has the eighth-highest leverage score by my numbers, he actually is the driver that should be rostered the most based off my leveraged-optimal usage score. That’s because he projects optimal at just under 30%, so the extra leverage puts him in the 35-40% range.
3. Riley Herbst ($4700): Herbst will undoubtedly be one of the lowest-rostered drivers starting in the back half of the field. That’s because he’s a rookie driving in bottom-tier equipment. However, this is equipment that can hang with the pack, as evidenced by David Ragan’s two top-10 finishes at the two Daytona races last year in this car. All Herbst has to do is hang out with teammate Cody Ware and survive the wrecks that happen far in front of him and he’ll be in contention for a top-15 finish. That should be good enough to give him a solid chance at ending up in the optimal lineup. He projects optimal at 15.8%. I actually think you’ll be plenty overweight on him here, so while I don’t think any extra leverage is necessary, if you’re a risk seeker looking for a big payday, you could do far worse than playing Herbst in 20% of your lineups.

If you aren’t in a state with legal betting, PrizePicks has set Justin Haley’s net cars passed line at 10.5.

Underweight Plays:

1. Fade the front four: Since NASCAR moved to the 40-car field in 2016, no driver starting in the first two rows has ended up with at least 47 points under the current DraftKings scoring system. That’s important, because 47 points has been needed to crack every winning and optimal lineup in that time frame. That means we’re going extremely underweight (or even completely fading) Alex Bowman ($7500), Kyle Larson ($9900), Joey Logano ($10,000), and Aric Almirola ($6200).
   
2. Kyle Busch ($9600): First and foremost, I’m not saying fade Kyle Busch. I’m saying go underweight on him. By virtue of starting in 36th, he’s worth being in a healthy chunk of lineups. In fact, my model says he’s optimally in about 40% of lineups! However, he also projects to be rostered in over half of all lineups. To get a little extra leverage, I don’t mind playing him in the 30-35% range, although that certainly is a risk. A less risky play is to play him near his optimal projection.

Paul Menard Pick of the Week:

The weekly segment that everyone loves is back for another year!

For those who don’t know what I mean, I once told everyone to go significantly overweight on Paul Menard at a Daytona summer race because he projected to be severely underplayed.

All he did was finish third and score myself and my readers a massive return on their investment, becoming a legend in my circles in the process.

So, for the 2023 Daytona 500, the “Paul Menard pick of the week” is … drumroll please … Daniel Suarez!

People think extremely lowly of Suarez at superspeedways, and they have every right to! Suarez has an awful record at these monstrous drafting tracks. But it’s not like he’s never had success.

Suarez has a career-best finish of eighth, but even better, he’s been in the top five multiple times late in the race only to be taken out in a late-race melee.

I think sentiment is even lower on Suarez after Thursday night’s Duel qualifying races. In his qualifier, he pushed Kyle Busch too hard and accidentally wrecked Busch. Then Suarez proceeded to miss his pit box on the ensuing pit stops.

Last year, Suarez started in 21st and was played in 9.5% of lineups. This year he starts 24th, and after a decent year last year, overall sentiment on him should go up. But recent sentiment is down.

Every person I talked to had a first reaction of avoiding Suarez. Like I said at the top, human behavior is predictable. I’ll gladly be overweight on Suarez.