Michigan International Speedway is the venue for the 23rd race of the NASCAR Cup Series season (3:00 p.m. ET, USA).
The talk of the weekend is how the Toyotas dominated practice and qualifying, but for DFS purposes we need to extend beyond the Toyotas and look at the whole field.
With horsepower at a premium, teams and drivers will need to make speed. That means I’m willing to be more aggressive in choosing fast cars, regardless of where they start, instead of leaning into place differential more.
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’s my NASCAR DFS picks and strategy for Sunday’s FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan.
Michigan DraftKings DFS Cash Game Picks
Ryan Blaney ($9300): Blaney is in a great cash-game spot here, priced down from the top tier at only $9300. Blaney starts 24th because he tagged the wall slightly during his qualifying lap. However, his team Penske teammates showed more speed, qualifying fourth and fifth.
Blaney should have no trouble moving forward. The question is, what is his upside?
With the Toyota speed, it’s somewhat capped. But not capped enough to avoid him in cash games. However, I do like being underweight on him in tournament formats.
Alex Bowman ($8200): Bowman is an even better cash-game play than Blaney.
Like Blaney, his 30th place starting position is not representative of his true speed.
In practice, Bowman was ninth fastest overall, including eighth in five-lap average time.
Unlike Blaney, I don’t mind being equal or even slightly overweight to the field on Bowman in tournaments.
Other cash-game drivers I like: Denny Hamlin (10,300), Brad Keselowski ($6900)
Michigan DraftKings DFS Tournament Picks
The SHR Cars: With all the focus on the Toyotas, lets not overlook the speed of the Stewart-Haas Racing cars. Kevin Harvick ($8400) and Aric Almirola ($6800) put up solid practice times, with little tire falloff over the long run.
Perhaps most surprisingly, Cole Custer ($6200) hung right with his teammates in practice times, making him a very sneaky tournament play.
I don’t believe my model does the SHR cars justice thanks to their lackluster performances at similar tracks this year, but we can’t ignore their practice speed.
That’s why I’m willing to go against my model here and bump them up.
In fact, if you want to positively correlate them in the optimizer settings while building lineups, I’d suggest that avenue.
Christopher Bell ($9000): I’m going back to the Bell well, simply for no reason other than he’s been ridiculously fast at similar tracks this year.
Bell ranks third in my newly developed FLAGS rankings at similar tracks, and he starts on the front row alongside Toyota stablemate Bubba Wallace.
Bell could be a little underused in tournaments because his practice times weren’t the best. I believe that’s a mistake.
Give me the fast car at a fast track. Bell can win this race.
Tyler Reddick ($9700): If there’s one driver who’s likely to break up the Toyota dominance, it’s last week’s winner at Indy, Tyler Reddick.
Reddick completely dominated the race at the other two-mile oval, Auto Club Speedway, earlier this year.
That was no fluke. Reddick was especially strong at the 1.5-mile ovals of Kansas and Charlotte, and overall he comes in sixth in my FLAGS rankings at similar tracks.
Add in his fast practice and qualifying times, and we have a nice contrarian play to Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin.
Michigan DraftKings DFS Paul Menard Pick of the Week
Play Erik Jones at $8100. He’s fast this weekend, has been fast at similar tracks, and starts close enough to the front to reduce his usage levels.
People will use Bowman and Harvick priced just above him, and Bubba Wallace priced slightly below him.
He won’t be totally low-owned, but my model gives him a solid 21% chance to end up in the optimal lineup.
While my model pegs him at about 20% usage, I believe the model is overstating that by several percentage points.
