The Super Bowl of NASCAR is here! The Daytona 500 and the kickoff of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season is Sunday and shaping up to be a doozy. The field was set with Wednesday’s qualifying sessions and then Thursday’s Duel Races and there were some surprises. We’ll go over all of that plus DFS strategy for the Daytona 500 and the top picks for both DraftKings and FanDuel for all formats of games. You can check out the weekly NASCAR DFS Podcast while reading it as well:

Who’s In The Field For The Daytona 500?

It seems like every year there are at least a few surprises in the field for The Great American Race and this year is no different. There were several open cars that showed up to try and make the field for Sunday’s Daytona 500 and a few made it. One got some serious help to do so as well. Travis Pastrana, in his first time in a Cup car, and Jimmie Johnson, after not racing a Cup car in two years, both made it based on qualifying. Then Connor Daly and Riley Herbst made it in based on their showings in the Duels on Thursday, but not without major help for Daly. It seems as though Pastrana and Johnson are getting the most buzz of that group.

Daytona International Speedway Track Layout

Daytona is one of the biggest tracks on the schedule at 2.5 miles per lap. It’s also one of the steepest-banked as well at 31 degrees in the corners. This leads to some of the fastest speeds on the calendar, even with the restrictions on the cars put in place. It’s not uncommon to see speeds heading into Turn 1 of over 200 mph when things really get going. New here for 2023 is the Choose Rule on restarts. We’ve seen this rule at intermediates and short tracks for a couple of years now but this year they’ve added it to super speedways as well which could make for very interesting restarts knowing how the pack racing works at Daytona. What’s not new is the double-yellow line rule which is always a controversial one any time it comes into play.

Daytona 500 NASCAR DFS Strategies

Even casual observers of NASCAR know that Daytona is home to some of the biggest wrecks of the year. That’s true, however there are ways to shield yourself a bit in NASCAR DFS. While we can’t predict where or when the crashes will happen nor who will be involved, we can build around them… sort of. Over the last several years of races at Daytona in general and specifically counting the Daytona 500 a DFS strategy has emerged that’s been proven to increase chances of winning. So what is it?

Well, first things first, we avoid the front row. That might sound counterintuitive to what we typically do at other tracks and that’s because it is. The pole-sitter hasn’t won the Daytona 500 in 22 years and they generally get shuffled back through the field pretty quickly. Secondly, we pick one driver starting in the top-10 of the field to anchor a lineup and then a second driver starting from 11-20. The rest are filled in with drivers starting in the back half of the field. Why do we do this and not just stack the back? Stacking the back is fine for cash game lines where it takes less to hit money, it won’t get big returns in tournaments. Secondly, the roster building laid out has a higher ceiling and has shown to be more effective for scoring points than hoping everyone in the back can avoid wrecks and just move up.

The last note is that we don’t concern ourselves with chasing laps led at Daytona. There are far too many lead changes per race to count on a laps led dominator. If we luck into having a driver lead a big chunk of laps, great, but we’re not really building with that in mind. Laps led will be separators in lineups to differentiate over just PD and finish position but again it’s something we’ll most likely luck into rather than seek out.

There won’t be a practice to qualifying table this week since practice nor qualifying spots matter that much at Daytona.

**The drivers in the playbook are the best plays based on prior track histories but everyone is in play for this particular race.

Stacks

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