The NASCAR Cup Series regular season is coming to an end at Daytona. The Coke Zero Sugar 400 is the last shot to make the playoffs in the Cup Series and without the top-30 in points requirement, it’s even more wide open. Any full-time driver who wins on Saturday night, who’s not already in the playoffs, makes the final 10-race sprint. So get ready for even more chaos. As if we couldn’t get any more chaos at Daytona right? But that brings up a question: how do we approach the chaos, or deal with it, for NASCAR DFS this week? What DFS strategy are we using for Daytona on DraftKings and FanDuel? What does the scoring history look like for Daytona races? Who are the top plays for DFS this week? All that in the NASCAR DFS Coke Zero Sugar 400 Playbook.

How To Build NASCAR DFS Lineups For Daytona

If we’re expecting, nay waiting for, chaos on Saturday night… what’s the best way to be building our DFS lineups on DraftKings and FanDuel? We’re going to get a little bit of exposure to a lot of drivers. Typically, for “normal races”, we like to have a core and build around that while interspersing other drivers in with the core. That simply won’t work as well this week. There is too much volatility in this race to be able to make that work. As we stated on the podcast this week, only four times in the last 10 races at Daytona has a driver starting in the top 10 won the race and none of those started in the first two rows. It’s not just about nabbing the winner though, it’s about having as many drivers as possible finish the race as high as possible. How do we do that? Well, in plain terms, we want to get one driver starting in the top 10 in the grid, 1-2 starting P11-P22 and the rest starting P23 and further on back.

If you just want to stack-the-back as it’s called that’s perfectly fine for cash, though you still have to pick the right drivers that avoid the wrecks. And there will be a lot of wrecks. This is the last chance to make the playoffs, and the first Daytona race under the lights for the Gen 7 car, which are going to amp up the drivers even more than normal. Stacking the back and leaving a ton of money on the table is the quickest way to build for cash games, but it’s not great for tournaments, at least not for finishing very high.

Using the strategy above is the best way to build for tournaments to have a shot at a takedown. In order to win a GPP contest though, you’ll almost assuredly have to have the winner of the race in your build and you’ll need a driver who’s led a chunk of laps. That can happen here given how the middle of these races typically settle into single-file affairs where a driver can click off 25-30 laps out front. For GPPs, another kind of stacking is helpful though — manufacturer stacking. That is to say, get a bunch of Fords or Chevys in a lineup together and either complete it with that or sprinkle in a Toyota or two. Why the manufacturer stack? Well, here, more than anywhere else, you’ll see manufacturers working together to get better finishes and working pit strategies. This is also why we don’t want a full Toyota stack as there are just six of them in the field and they have to work with either Fords or Chevys to have success.

Stacks

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