NASCAR DFS HighPoint 400 Playbook: Top DraftKings and FanDuel Plays

Pocono Raceway. The Tricky Triangle. It’s here this weekend. The only Cup race for the legendary Pennsylvania track but that doesn’t make it any tougher or trickier of a track to master. It’s not only unique in layout but also in comparable tracks for NASCAR DFS. This week for the HighPoint.com 400 NASCAR DFS Playbook we’ll break down the strategies for the race, the comparable tracks for Pocono Raceway, and what the practice results and qualifying results say about Sunday’s race. So let’s dive into the DFS podcast and the strategy for DraftKings and FanDuel.

What Makes Pocono Raceway Unique?

Well, the shape for one — a triangle. There are no other triangular-shaped tracks on any other racing schedule in the world. So right off the bat that’s a tough comp, but then there’s the distance of 2.5 miles per lap. The only other ones of that distance are road courses or Daytona and Talladega. The third issue? It’s pretty flat. The steepest corner is Turn 1 at 14 degrees with the others being progressively shallowed at eight and six degrees respectively. If Pocono is sounding hard to comp, it is. But there are tracks we can look at for comparable data. If we look at tracks where they are on the throttle a lot throughout a lap, ones where track position is key and flatter tracks, we can find a good subset of data.

What Tracks Compare To Pocono for NASCAR DFS?

Given the needs for the comparable tracks we listed above, what tracks are we looking to take our data from? Firstly, they have to be only 2022-2023 races since those are the ones using the Gen 7 cars. Secondly, we’re looking at Auto Club, Las Vegas, Kansas, Charlotte, Nashville, Michigan, and of course Pocono. That might sound like an interesting grouping but most of those are on-throttle layouts with tough passing conditions and a few are shallower than you’d expect like Michigan, Kansas, and Nashville. Those 12 races make up the data referenced in the playbook.

DraftKings NASCAR DFS Strategy for HighPoint 400

If we take a look at the chart below, we’ll see the scoring by starting spot over the last five Pocono races, excluding the second of the back-to-back races in 2020 and 2021. This should give us a good idea of what we’re looking at for strategy for DraftKings scoring.

As we can see, laps-led targets are key as is position differential. While we’d suspect that passing is tough and starting up front is a guarantee to win and lead laps, it’s not always. There are late-race strategies that can shift a lot of drivers around, especially in fuel mileage races. Aside from last year when Hamlin won but was DQ’d, the last pole-sitter to win was back in 2017. Over the last five races here, we’ve seen an average of one driver a race leading 50 or more laps a race and two drivers to top 20 laps led. The fastest laps are fairly spread out with an average of four drivers a race reaching double-digit tallies.

FanDuel NASCAR DFS Strategy for HighPoint 400

If we take a look at the chart below, we’ll see the scoring by starting spot over the last five Pocono races, excluding the second of the back-to-back races in 2020 and 2021. This should give us a good idea of what we’re looking at for strategy for FanDuel scoring.

In general here, we’re shooting for drivers who are going to finish inside the top-10 and complete as many laps as possible while also moving up. So while the laps-led stats don’t matter as much here for FanDuel, though they’re a good differentiator, the more important ones are passing and finishing. Pocono has one of the lowest top-10 finish% of any track on the schedule. What does that mean? Well, over the last five races here, on average, 30-percent of the drivers who start outside the top-12 finish inside the top-10. That means that 7-in-10 spots in the final top-10 are drivers who started there. So if we’re targeting finishing position points, we need to look mainly for drivers starting in the top-10 while sprinkling in some starting further back. There’s also been an average of 5.4 drivers a race moving up at least 10 spots. If we combine top-10 starters with a few guys we expect to move up, that’s the winning strategy for FanDuel and laps led are simply gravy at that point.

NASCAR Pocono Practice and Qualifying Results

This table should give you an idea of who might move up and who may fall back from their starting spots. It shows single-lap, 5-lap, 10-lap, and overall lap averages from practice and how the qualifying results compare with the average of those.

Stacks

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