NASCAR DFS: Hollywood Casino 400 Track Breakdown

With the NASCAR playoffs heading to the Round of 8 at Kansas Speedway this week, the pressure is really on for those drivers trying to make the Championship Four in just a few races. This will be the second race at Kansas this season as the other one came on a Thursday night in July after the All-Star race. A win at this 1.5-mile track will punch a driver’s ticket to Phoenix and a shot to go for the Cup title but if the racing is similar to what we saw here earlier in the year, getting a win is more easily said than done.

This track has progressive banking in the corners which widens the racing grooves and gives drivers the choice of going the faster way around, on the bottom of the corners, or carrying more momentum through the corners by driving up by the wall and trying to get a run down the straightaway. While this race will start during the day, as did the Thursday race, the night time won’t be a factor this time though with this race being in the middle of October, the temperatures in the midwest are now cooler during the day and not far from where they were on average for the July race during the evening. With no practice again this week, we’ll be looking heavily at who had good setups for the race here last time and who’s done well at this distance this year as well.

Strategy Notes:

This race has 267 laps in it and so laps led and dominator points will be a factor in builds this week to be sure with both cash and GPP builds. Like with most intermediate tracks we’ll be balancing the builds between dominator points and position differential because this is a track where PD can be obtained pretty well as there have been at least eight drivers a race to gain double-digit position differential in the last three races here and 36 total drivers to accomplish that in the last five events in Kansas combined. A sneaky important stat this week aside from PD and dominator points is top-15 rate and that’s because in four of the last five races 19 or fewer drivers have finished on the lead lap including three races in which 15 or fewer pulled off the feat. So drivers that have high top-15 rates are more likely to finish on the lead lap.

Also the manufacturers have been decently split here in the last 10 races but it has played well into the hands of the JGR drivers a bit more than others.

Programming Notes:

The race is Sunday afternoon at 2:30 pm ET

Friday: Podcast w/ Dan, DFS Rankings, Projections

Saturday: Playbook, Best Bets article

Sunday: Example Lineups

Weather: Cloudy and a high of 47 on Sunday

Dan will have coverage for the Trucks and Xfinity races as well and we’ll be in chat all weekend.

Core Drivers By Tier

Tier 1 - Denny Hamlin

• Hamlin has won the last two races at Kansas including this race in the playoffs last year (though in the Round of 12)

• He has solid PD upside as he’ll start P7 on Sunday

• While he’s said he’s been hit and miss at this distance this year, he did win at Homestead as well which is a similar track.

Tier 2 - Erik Jones

• Jones has a 4.8 average finish in the last four races at Kansas with three top-fives

• He’s been starting about 13th on average and will start 11th on Sunday so the PD upside holds.

• Jones also has the best average finish in the last five races this season and has finished P8 or better nearly every playoff race.

Tier 3 - Tyler Reddick

• Reddick has finished inside the top-15 both of his races at this track and has a positive 11 PD mark.

• He also has a positive 5.0 PD mark in the last five similar races he’s run including two top-10s.

• He’s also posted four top-15s in the last five races this year with a 5.4 positive PD mark. 

Contrarian Play - Chris Buescher

• Buescher has the 10th best average finish in the last five races this year at 13.4 with three top-10s.

• He has five top-20s in the last eight races here and moved up 13 spots in this race last year.

• If he gets to P15 at race’s end he’ll hit 5x value on DK.

Fade - Ryan Blaney

• This has not been the track for Blaney to this point as he moves back about 14 spots a race in the last four.

• In the last eight races here he’s gone backward nearly seven spots a race as well with just three top-10s.

• He’s averaged less than 2x value on DK the last five races and just over 3x value on FD in that same span at his price on both sites this week.

Last Four Races at Kansas Speedway

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

Top-20 Drivers Over Last Eight Races at Kansas

Top-20 Drivers At Similar Races

(Chicagoland, Homestead, Kansas, Las Vegas)

Momentum

This shows the last five races of the season and the driver’s stats so we can see who is coming in hot and who’s coming in cold.

Drivers

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

Team

Finishing Spot Rangers By Starting Spot Ranges

Price Changes

These tables show the difference in pricing for each driver from the first race here in March to the race this weekend. A positive in the difference column means they are more expensive this time while a negative shows they are cheaper.

Weekly Rankings

Race Hist, Recent Form, Track Hist, Type Hist are all ranked on average finish position over the last four races at the track, five races this season, eight races at this track, and similar races respectively. The Avg. Rating and Top-15 % columns are ranked on those categories in the last four races at this track. The L8 PD column ranks the position differential over the last eight races from best (most positive) to worst (most negative).

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

DFS Value Averages

This replaces the DFS Scoring Averages table that had been here. Instead, we have the DFS Value figures instead. We have taken their points scored over the last two and five races on each site and averaged those out and then divided that average by their salary divided by 1,000.

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4