NASCAR DFS: North Carolina Education Lottery 200 Playbook

My apologies for a late drop with the Truck playbook for Friday night’s race. It was a mix of having to record Gettin’ Buzzed with Howard and Hallam, then doing the NASCAR podcast on Thursday night, and wanting to wait until after practice Friday morning. But we have a great race on tap to kick off Memorial Day Weekend so here’s what we’re looking at for Friday’s race!

Practice ran at 11:35am ET and qualifying will be 5:35pm ET and they will run single-lap qualifying. Then the Cup cars get practice before our boys run the North Carolina Education Lottery 200 at 8:30pm ET. We’ve got 134 laps tonight broken into 30-30-74 lap stages. They’ll have four sets of tires and the fuel run is about 50 laps. This is your typical, run of the mill, mile-and-a-half track. We can pull from a few other tracks to know who should run well tonight, but as always it certainly helps that we have the benefit of practice and qualifying. Here are the results from Friday's practice session...

Driver Pool

John Hunter Nemechek ($10,900) – Duh. He’s good on intermediate tracks. He led 94 laps in a winning effort at Las Vegas and he grabbed top fives at Atlanta and Kansas while leading at lead 15 laps at both tracks and he registered double-digit fastest laps at each track as well. He’s going to be popular wherever he starts (and rightly so). He’s been the class of the field so far, but the next driver might have something to say about that. Update: JHN got into the wall during practice. I’m not overly concerned as of Friday afternoon. We’ll see what happens during qualifying. His damage wasn’t as bad as Drew Dollar’s. Update Part Two: JHN’s team made quick repairs to the truck and he was able to get a couple more laps in before the end of the session.

Sheldon Creed ($10,700) – Slightly cheaper than JHN is Sheldon Creed who isn’t as successful on intermediate tracks in 2021 as JHN is, but he’s no slouch either. Last season he won at Kentucky and Texas while finishing as the runner-up at Vegas and Kansas in the playoffs, and he grabbed a top five at Charlotte last year. Depending on how things shake out in qualifying, I’m not opposed to playing them together depending on where they qualify because you still have $7,100 per driver to play around with.

Austin Hill ($10,400) – Hill is still seeking his first win of the season and surprisingly enough he’s only led a dozen total laps on the year. But he looked great at the intermediate tracks in 2021. We’re talking top three finishes at Vegas, Atlanta, and Kansas. His practice times were less than stellar, but I’m willing to give him a pass given that we know what he and his truck are capable of. He could just as easily have been trying to feel out the track. He saw plenty of other trucks wreck in turn two and he may have gone the conservative route. Update: Sure enough, toward the end of the practice session Hill turned out the fastest lap of the whole session.

Grant Enfinger ($9,700) – Enfinger’s an interesting play because he’s not in his normal Thorsport ride. He’s in the 9-truck which isn’t great equipment, but he gets the most out of it. For example, he started 15th and finished seventh at Vegas, started 29^th and finished 17^th at Kansas, and he started 23^rd and finished fourth at COTA last week. So regardless of the lesser equipment he’s getting the most out of it. Now to play him he’ll have to have similar PD upside this week. If he’s starting in the top 15 he’s mostly just a GPP play. If he qualifies tenth or higher it might be a little difficult to play him without as much PD on his side, but he’s still a GPP option if that’s the case.

Zane Smith ($9,500) – Smith has speed almost every week, but he just doesn’t seal the deal. His DFS numbers aren’t great but he finished sixth at Vegas and Atlanta, and seventh at Kansas. Not to mention he started 30^th at Charlotte a year ago and finished third. In general, he’s run pretty well on 1.5-mile tracks. Sure, I wish he was maybe a little bit cheaper but the price tag won’t scare me away.

Stewart Friesen ($9,000) – Friesen had the 11^th-fastest lap with 20 minutes to go in Friday’s practice round before he took the ride to the garage. I’m hoping Friesen’s not burnt out. He raced Thursday night in New York, races Friday in Charlotte, and has another race on Saturday so it’s a busy holiday weekend for him. But his car engineer is being bumped up to crew chief so maybe we see a different approach/strategy out of the 52-truck. Truth be told, he hasn’t been awful on intermediate tracks in 2021. He got a top five at Vegas, a top ten at Atlanta, and a top 15 at Kansas. Starting spot will determine his Cash/GPP status but regardless I don’t anticipate a ton of ownership on him given the price tag.

Johnny Sauter ($8,200) – Let’s try this again. Last week I was on board with Sauter because we had practice and qualifying, albeit in awful weather. This week I’m going back to the well. From 2016-2018 Sauter finished first, second, and third at Charlotte and even last year after the COVID hiatus, Sauter got a top ten finish in what was an overall awful year for his team. Halfway through Friday’s practice session he’s running top ten speeds. His price tag isn’t awful and there are paths for him to hit 5X value regardless of where he qualifies.

Ty Majeski ($7,900) – I completely forgot Ty Majeski was a person until I looked at tonight’s slate. He’s stepping into the 66-truck for Thorsport racing so the equipment is solid and halfway through Friday’s practice he logged a top 12 lap. He did pretty well at intermediate tracks last year with Niece Motorsports. He got a top ten at this very track, and grabbed top 15’s at Vegas, Kansas, and Texas. If he qualifies poorly he could make for a very nice PD play, but we’ll see how qualifying shakes out.

Tanner Gray ($7,300) – Gray has shown really solid speed lately. But the results haven’t been great but we’ll give him a pass for COTA last week. He finished in the top 20 at all three intermediate tracks so far in 2021 and he flashed top five speed during practice.

Drew Dollar ($6,900) – Awfully nice price tag for Kyle Busch’s truck. That’s basically what you’re paying for. Dollar’s a regular in the ARCA series where the field is almost half the size compared to what we’ll see Friday night. That being said, he’s consistent at that level. The concern is that he runs too clean in qualifying and qualifies well. This equipment certainly can do that. If he isn’t offering PD we’ll likely take him out of our driver pool. Update: Dollar put KB’s truck into the wall during practice and there was heavy rear damage. So we’re going to have to see what happens in qualifying.

Hailie Deegan ($6,400) – Consider this more of a “gut” play as Deegan has looked more comfortable in the car as the weeks have gone by. She’s rolling in with five straight finishes inside the top 20, including a top 15 at Kansas. She didn’t look as good at Atlanta or Vegas, but again she’s been building momentum and she’s been churning out better results as the season has progressed.

Chase Purdy ($6,300) – Don’t feel obligated to go to Purdy here. Honestly, I’m mentioning him because the equipment is still great, but he has just one top 20 all season and it came at Bristol Dirt. You can honestly find another driver in GMS equipment for cheaper if you keep on reading. I’m hoping practice helps Purdy. He ran the most practice laps of anyone in the field and last year he did better on 1.5-mile tracks than the numbers this year have shown. Keep exposure to GPP’s and don’t go overboard. If he qualifies poorly we’ll see what he needs to hit value for us.

Carson Hocevar ($6,100) – Hocevar’s a momentum play this week. He’s coming in with back-to-back top ten finishes including a third-place finish last week at COTA. He’s done okay at intermediate tracks but what stands out is that he had the third-fastest lap during Friday’s session. Depending on his qualifying spot we could be looking at a fantastic value play.

Austin Wayne Self ($6,000) – As long as DraftKings keeps pricing him down, we’ll keep throwing him in our builds. He finished 14^th at Vegas, 16^th at Kansas, and 23^rd at Atlanta, but Atlanta’s tire wear doesn’t compare to Charlotte so we can still feel okay about AWS as long as he runs clean. I’m perfectly fine looking to him in GPP’s if he still qualifies in the top 12-15 since that could push his ownership down. If he qualifies 18-20 then he’s creeping into cash game eligibility.

Jack Wood ($5,700) – You’re paying for GMS equipment here. And it’s a significant discount. Wood has been running ARCA and he got a top five at Kansas a few weeks ago. I wasn’t on board last week and he didn’t really do anything. Let’s see if he fares better on a 1.5-mile track with better weather. Regardless of where he starts, I’d likely just keep exposure to GPP’s.

Core Drivers

Based on the starting order (since qualifying was cancelled), I don’t truly believe anyone’s a “lock” outside of JHN, Creed, and Majeski. It’s shaping to be more of a GPP night in my opinion.