NASCAR DFS Playbook Alsco Uniforms 300: Top DraftKings Picks

The Craftsman Truck Series kicked off the greatest weekend for Motorsports last night at Charlotte Motor Speedway as Ben Rhodes scored his first win of the season. We’ll look to continue things on Saturday with the NASCAR Xfinity Series racing this afternoon. As mentioned previously, Memorial Day weekend is huge for racing fans. Sunday morning will deliver the F1 World Championship Monaco Grand Prix, followed by IndyCar’s Indianapolis 500 in the afternoon, and then the NASCAR Cup Series will run the Coca-Cola 600 under the lights from Charlotte. It was great seeing the positive screenshots from Friday’s race and we’ll look to keep that momentum going with Xfinity. Let’s dive into the NASCAR DFS top plays for Saturday afternoon’s Alsco Uniforms 300.

Wherever the NASCAR schedules goes for the 2023 season, bad weather has a tendency to follow. We had a clean day on Friday, but there is bad weather on the horizon… for the rest of weekend. As the forecast currently stands, it’s supposed to start raining in Charlotte around Noon ET on Saturday and it’s really not supposed to stop until mid-day on Monday. The good news for the drivers is that most of them reside in Charlotte, as do the teams, so they can all rest comfortably in their own beds. The bad news? The Xfinity Series has to race in Portland, Oregon next weekend. That means haulers need to be on the road no later than Tuesday. So here’s the latest on what is likely to happen if there’s no break in the weather.

This is still all very fluid and we’ll take it as it comes. The weather concerns this weekend have me a little hesitant to go heavy so I might be playing the $1 Happy Hour on DraftKings and saving my funds for another weekend, as much as I’d love to play Charlotte heavier. But similar to last night’s race we’re looking for multiple dominators in this race for our Tournament lineups and rounding out the build with some position differential targets.

Alsco Uniforms 300 Practice Notes

NASCAR DFS Driver Pool

Kyle Busch ($13,500; Starting P6)

Truthfully, Busch is just an okay option today. It’s his third time driving the 10-car for Kaulig Racing and while he’s retuned 68 (Phoenix) and 52 (Vegas) fantasy points on DraftKings in his previous two races, I don’t think he’s as likely to pay off the price tag today. He starts P6 so he has less PD to work with than in the other races and he hasn’t collected a ton of dominator points overall. Now he’s still Kyle Busch and there’s plenty of upside regardless. But this isn’t the Truck Series, where when he enters, he’s easily in the best equipment in the field. The playing field is more level and the first three rows for this race are littered with talent. Update: Kyle Busch has withdrawn from the Xfinity Series race. He will be replaced by Justin Haley. You now have to remove Busch from your DFS lineups.

John Hunter Nemechek ($10,800; Starting P2)

The general consensus this weekend will be deciding between JHN or Justin Allgaier. JHN was incredibly fast in practice posting the fastest single lap and the third-best ten-lap average behind Allgaier. He’s done very well on the intermediate tracks this year having led plenty of laps and collecting top five finishes along the way. He’ll be a popular dominator candidate whenever they decide to run this race. Ty Gibbs is also viable as well. After all he is the 2022 NASCAR Xfinity Series champion and is a threat as always if he can find his way to the front.

Justin Allgaier ($10,400; Starting P1)

Allgaier landed the pole for this race and as I mentioned in JHN’s section, these two seem to be the favorites to collect a majority of the dominator points. I’ll likely have two Happy Hour lineups with both of them included, but it’s still bold playing both drivers from the front row. He has plenty of top five finishes at Charlotte and even led 63 laps a year ago before Josh Berry came on late to win the race. He’s flirted with the win so many times this year with five finishes of either second or third, but that first win of the season has still evaded him. Cole Custer is an interesting pivot that I haven’t seen get much traction heading into this race. He was second-fastest in the ten-lap average, just behind Allgaier, and his recent finishes are trending well for him and he’s collected some dominator points as well. He’ll be a fairly contrarian dominator candidate if he can get up front.

Josh Berry ($9,800; Starting P14)

It’s crazy that Jr. Motorsports doesn’t have a win on the season. You would figure Allgaier or Berry would have at least one between them by now, but it’s been a slightly disappointing 2023 season so far. Berry still has plenty of top ten finishes this year with some dominator points to boot at select races. He won this race last year and with the recent news breaking that he’s likely to sign a full-time deal with Stewart-Haas Racing for the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season, he’s got good vibes heading into this race, plus the extra PD doesn’t hurt.

Sammy Smith ($9,500; Starting P18)

There’s certainly some win equity here with Smith considering he’s in similar equipment to Ty Gibbs and John Hunter Nemechek. However, his best performances have come on the shorter, flat tracks. Luckily for this race and at his price, we just need a good finish from him starting P18. If he can gain ten spots of PD and hold that spot he’ll be worth the price.

Austin Hill ($9,200; Starting P17)

We’re getting a discount on Hill this week despite back-to-back fourth place finishes at Darlington and Dover. It’s been over two months since his last win (even though Xfinity has only run six races since then), but he does have three on his resume so far this year and he won at Vegas, which was refreshing to see since he has mostly dominated the superspeedways so far in his career. He’s been collecting dominator points lately and he’s cheap enough where we could be satisfied with a top eight finish even if he didn’t collect any dominator points. Sam Mayer makes for a good GPP pivot off Hill, Smith, and Berry. But the risk is that he starts in the top ten and doesn’t offer as much PD as the others. I will still mix Mayer into two or three builds.

Parker Kligerman ($8,200; Starting P20)

The $8K range is so tough to gauge. I’ll touch on Chandler Smith in the Daniel Hemric section, but there are some tough plays to trust here. Brandon Jones and Sheldon Creed probably start too high and likely go backward. Even Kligerman has been wildly all over the place. He can easily finish top 12 or he will wreck out. He did have some tire rub in practice, but I won’t dwell on that for this race. Kligerman is likely optimal if he finishes in the top ten, but I think that’s a big ask in this field. Riley Herbst is an okay pivot in this range. He got off to such a great start early in the year, but he’s been awful ever since.

Daniel Hemric ($7,900; Starting P13)

Just two races ago he was $9,200 so we’re getting a driver with top ten equity at a sub-$8K price tag. If pricing wasn’t a factor, I would say his teammate, Chandler Smith, is probably the better play. But we are confined to our budgets and if we’re spending up for PD and/or dominator points, then we aren’t fitting Smith into too many builds. Hemric is $900 cheaper and starts right behind Smith. Hemric’s results haven’t been as consistent, but he can still pay off this cheap price tag with a good finish. He does need a clean race in order to do so, and we’ve been burned by him plenty of times in the past.

Kaz Grala ($7,400; Starting P32)

I don’t think Grala should be priced over Sieg, but his recent form lately has been pretty good. Grala got off to a rough start this year, but in four of his last five races he’s finished 15^th or better and the one race he finished outside that range was Talladega where he was in a wreck. He finished 12^th at Dover last month and he was top ten at Darlington a couple weeks ago. The lone reservation is that he’s never raced at Charlotte in the Xfinity Series but this is a pretty standard intermediate track so I wouldn’t worry about that too much. A lot of people will go here in Cash games, and that’s fine. I don’t think you need to, but I’m fine with that decision either way. If you want to get different in Tournaments, Carson Hocevar makes for a good pivot. I slept on him two weeks ago at Darlington and he impressed after a great run in the Truck Series. Similar to this week, he had a great run last night in the  and he’ll likely be overlooked in this range. I do worry about his ability to finish well with the talent in this week’s race, but he should be in a nice leverage spot.

Ryan Sieg ($7,200; Starting P36)

Sieg blew an engine in practice and will have to start at the rear for the equipment change. This is basically the same thing that happened to Tyler Ankrum in yesterday’s Craftsman Truck Series race and Ankrum only managed to finished 28^th. I’ll say that Sieg definitely has more upside than Ankrum though. He’s done enough in his career to at least warrant being the better play in their respective race series. Sieg has wrecked in his last two Memorial Day weekend races at Charlotte, and that’s never a good sign. But in the 11 races prior to those wrecks he does have six finishes in the top 15. He’s basically paying off this price tag with a top 20 finish so he’s easily in play for Cash games, but don’t go overboard in Tournaments in case chaos happens… This is the Xfinity Series after all.

Parker Retzlaff ($6,700; Starting P37)

Part of the reason I don’t think you need to play Grala in Cash games is because you can save $700 and play Retzlaff who starts second-to-last and can’t really kill you too much. Plenty of people will lock in Grala, Sieg, and Retzlaff in their Cash builds and from there it basically becomes a 3v3 on where to get different. Retzlaff has been qualifying much better than where he’s finished so the DFS results aren’t as good and the price tag has suffered despite numerous top 20 finishes on the year. He’s basically paying off this price tag if he finishes 23^rd or better which he’s more than capable of doing.

Jeremy Clements ($6,300; Starting P27)

Clements probably goes overlooked for the likes of Grala, Sieg, and Retzlaff. Clements comes into this race with three straight top 20 finishes including a top 15 at Darlington a few weeks ago. He’s had some success at Charlotte throughout his career and gives us some precious PD to work with as well. He’s a great tournament pivot off the three previous drivers mentioned that start outside the top 30. He’s also fine for Cash games as well.

Josh Williams ($5,600; Starting P29)

This is the most PD we’ve had from Williams all year and he has five top 20’s on the year. Two of those did come at Talladega and Daytona if we’re being transparent. But he did finish 17^th at Darlington two weeks ago. He’s run here five times in his career and only finished twice. But when he did finish he’s been 14^th and 21^st. If you want more of a safety net you can look to Jeffrery Earnhardt who is $200 more but starts dead last and he can’t get you negative points despite the awful equipment. If you play Earnhardt, the expectation for his ceiling should be 4X value and he’d only need to finish 28^th for that.

Kyle Sieg ($4,900; Starting P24)

The value plays are ugly this week. It’s not ideal in this range so I do think most people just punt to Earnhardt since he can’t get them negative points. Kyle Sieg’s form lately has been awful but I don’t want to write him off completely. He finished 20^th at Vegas earlier this season and even finished 15^th at Auto Club. Aside from a top 20 finish at Richmond, it’s been a bad year for him since the West coast swing. But this is a cheap price tag for this equipment and he’s strictly just a Tournament play. He’s another driver that if he simply put up 20 fantasy points, I’d be fine with that. If you need a safer play in this range, it’s probably Patrick Emerling who is $100 more but starts ten spots behind Sieg. Emerling likely gets passed early and will need some chaos to return some points, but he had a good showing at Darlington two weeks ago.

NASCAR DFS Core Plays