NASCAR DFS Playbook O'Reilly Auto Parts 150: Top DraftKings Picks

After a week off, the Craftsman Truck Series is back in action from Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for the O’Reilly Auto Parts 150. With just three races left in the regular season for the Truck Series, time is running out for drivers to lock up a playoff spot with a win. Zane Smith, Corey Heim, Christian Eckes, Grant Enfinger, Carson Hocevar, and Ben Rhodes are currently the only six drivers to have secured their playoff spots with wins. So there are still four spots left in the playoffs to be decided as Ty Majeski, Nick Sanchez, Matt DiBenedetto, Matt Crafton, Stewart Friesen, and Tanner Gray battle it out to qualify for the postseason. A year ago, we saw Parker Kligerman win this race for Henderson Motorsports so it’s entirely possible for a smaller team to get out in front and claim victory here. Let’s take a look at the NASCAR DFS drivers and strategies for Saturday afternoon’s road race from Ohio!

Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course is a 2.258-mile road course with 13 turns. The IndyCar Series ran here last weekend for the and we’ll see some open wheel specialists make an appearance for Saturday’s race and they’ll be mentioned in the driver pool below.

Saturday’s race will be broken into 20-20-27 lap segments so we won’t have many dominator points to consider. Last year’s race saw seven cautions for 15 laps, but the new stage break rules on road courses may lead to longer green flag runs. But with that said we’ll likely still only have 40-45 dominator points to work with. DFS lineup construction will come down to nailing the winner and strong finishers (with position differential). The Craftsman Truck Series doesn’t run as many road courses as the NASCAR Cup or Xfinity Series so we really don’t have as much data to look at. But we can gather which drivers perform better on road courses based on what we’ve seen in previous years at COTA, Watkins Glen, Sonoma, Mid-Ohio, and even from the “Mosport” track up in Canada. 

O'Reilly Auto Parts 150 Practice Notes

NASCAR DFS Driver Pool

Zane Smith ($10,700; Scored from P10)

Smith might be in a tier all his own on road courses in the Truck Series. If you caught my note in the PrizePicks channel in our Discord, you’ll have seen that I liked the over on his 38.5 fantasy point prop. He’s won the last two races at COTA and was second in this race a year ago. Truthfully, he probably could’ve won it. But Parker Kligerman played a big role in pushing Zane Smith to the front at the 2022 Daytona race in the Spring and Zane’s team reminded him of that gesture in the closing laps of this race. Did Zane let Kligerman win? No, but he raced without the intent of wrecking Kligerman. Overall, Zane’s results have been solid on road courses and with no drivers from the Xfinity or Cup Series participating, he’s a bit of a safer option. But here’s the problem. He qualified for the final round on Friday, but looked to have broken his transmission on the final round lap. So he’ll be scored from P10 but likely go to the rear for repairs. Overall, that does suck and limits his ceiling because he won’t lead as many laps, but he can still climb through the field and score a good finish if they get the truck fixed. Because of this news he’s just a GPP play for Saturday’s race.

Corey Heim ($10,400; Starting P1)

Heim is having a phenomenal year. He wrecked at Atlanta and then finished 15^th at Bristol Dirt. But aside from that, he’s finished eighth or better in the other ten races. Sadly he only has one win to show for it, but he’s led double-digit laps in six straight races coming into Mid-Ohio. He was significantly faster than everyone in his qualifying group, by almost a full second so the speed should translate to another strong finish. He finished poorly here last year with a transmission issue but did finish sixth at COTA earlier this season. With Zane Smith having issues in the final round of qualifying, Corey Heim looks to have the truck to beat.

Carson Hocevar ($10,200; Starting P11)

The career year continues for Carson Hocevar coming off his impressive win at Nashville a couple weeks ago. He enters this weekend’s race with five straight finishes in the top five and he has a pair of wins on his resume. He’s been regularly logging fastest laps and laps led. He started and finished third here last year and has top ten finishes at Sonoma, Watkins Glen, and COTA. He also has Conor Daly as a teammate this weekend and mentioned after practice he’s been picking Daly’s brain for this race. It wouldn’t be surprising if he scored another top five finish on Saturday. Ty Majeski ($10,000; Starting P2) is a good pivot who posted good speed in practice and starts on the front row. He just tends to suck whenever I feature him though.

Stewart Friesen ($9,700; Starting P35)

Friesen ran off track during practice and didn’t post a qualifying lap so the team could make some repairs. Honestly, it didn’t look like the damage was all that severe. It sounds like there was a little damage to the nose, but he wasn’t able to post a qualifying lap. So he starts from the rear and offers a ton of position differential. That means he’s probably a Cash game lock and perfectly fine for Tournaments as well. Friesen isn’t really considered a road course ringer in this series, but if he just meets his average finish he should pay off the price tag. At COTA he’s finished 14^th, 9^th, and 17^th. He finished 10^th and 11^th at Daytona’s Road Course a few years back. He had a pair of seventh place finished at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park and he was fourth in this race a year ago. The team has plenty of time to fix the truck and assuming everything is alright with it he should move his way up through the field and finish strong. He’s on the outside of the top ten in terms of playoff standings so he can’t really afford to have a bad race.

Ben Rhodes ($9,600; Starting P12)

I honestly can’t figure out if Rhodes is good on road courses or not. He won the second Daytona Road Course race back in 2021 and he has three top ten finishes in as many races at COTA. But he’s also only finished 15^th at Watkins Glen and 18^th at Sonoma. So it’s a bit of a mixed bag. But he continues to qualify poorly and offers some position differential this weekend. He certainly has the ability to improve on the 23^rd place finish he registered last year at Mid-Ohio especially after posting a very fast lap in practice.

Tyler Ankrum ($8,900; Starting P13)

Ankrum is a play that I don’t see garnering a ton of rostership so I love the leverage we might get here. In three races at COTA, Ankrum has three finishes of seventh or better including a fourth place finish this year. He also has top ten finishes at Watkins Glen and Sonoma and was top ten in the first two stages in this race last year before finishing 21^st. He also ran the ARCA race Friday night to get extra track time and he looked to have speed in practice and qualifying. If you wanted a little extra PD in this range you could consider Chase Purdy ($9,000; Starting P24) who is $100 more. Purdy has a few top 16 finishes on road courses but I still feel better about the ceiling of Ankrum.

Taylor Gray ($8,700; Starting P15)

Sneaky good GPP play right here. TRICON Garage made the decision to change crew chiefs for Gray ahead of Mid-Ohio. Jake Hampton, the truck’s “car” chief, will now step into the crew chief role. The change looks to have paid off a little bit because Gray looked pretty strong in practice posting a top ten lap. On top of that, he won the ARCA race here in 2022 and he has a previous ARCA win from Portland. Perhaps he’s a bit of a road course specialist in this series? Truthfully, I don’t think a lot of DFS players will go here because he’s lacked consistency with his finishes. But there’s speed in this truck and he even finished 11^th at COTA earlier in the year. His practice speeds were about eight spots better than where he ended up qualifying.

Matt Crafton ($8,400; Starting P25)

This is an okay play, but not a great one. The equipment is perfectly fine and sure, there’s a potential top ten with Crafton. But he’s not really known as a road ringer in the Truck Series. He had two great finishes at Daytona’s Road Course a few years ago, but everywhere else has been underwhelming. He finished 18^th here a year ago, doesn’t have a top ten at COTA in three races, and has just struggled at road courses in recent years. But once again, Crafton doesn’t post a good qualifying lap and he even spun off the track into the grass during practice. So we’re getting position differential out of him and he can probably carve out 35-40 fantasy points on DraftKings in this race.

Conor Daly ($7,500; Scored From P18)

Conor Daly is mostly an IndyCar specialist that has plenty of experience at this track. Seriously, he just raced here last weekend. He has a handful of top 15 finishes at Mid-Ohio in IndyCar including a couple top ten finishes as well. He’ll be in a Niece Motorsports truck this weekend and we know that Carson Hocevar has collected a pair of wins in comparable equipment this year. Daly ran nine laps in practice and posted the 14^th-fastest single lap. Daly did post a respectable qualifying effort, but will start from the rear because the team has to fix a power steering issue. He’s likely going to come with lower rostership because of that and should only be played in GPP’s/Tournaments.

Marco Andretti ($7,300; Starting P7)

Andretti will make his Truck Series debut on Saturday in the 7-truck for Spire Motorsports. Andretti is the reigning SRX champion and he has plenty of experience at Mid-Ohio from his time in IndyCar. He never won here, but he did gather a handful of top ten finishes and overall posted some of his best results on road courses. He’s likely a bit underpriced and the last name alone will likely attract the attention of even casual DFS players. He qualified very well so just limit exposure to Tournaments.

William Sawalich ($6,700; Starting P8)

Sawalich will be a value play on everybody’s radar for Saturday. He’s in the 1-truck for TRICON so we know the equipment will be fine. He’s one of TRD’s next prized prospects and he’s looked great when he’s raced in any series this year. He made his debut at Martinsville with TRICON in the Spring and got a top ten finish. He’s won races in the ARCA Series at Berlin Speedway, Five Flags Speedway, and Flat Rock Speedway. As far as road courses go he was top five at Portland and Sonoma when racing the ARCA West series. To get his feet wet at Mid-Ohio he also ran Friday night’s ARCA race so he’s gained some familiarity with this layout. I didn’t love the speed from Brett Holmes ($6,900; Starting P32) but he offers far more PD and possibly a safer floor if you need a pivot in this range.

Dean Thompson ($6,600; Starting P20)

Thompson shows up with speed almost every week. That’s the benefit of driving for a good team like TRICON. However, finishing a race is his Achilles heel. He hasn’t finished 7 of 13 races this season, but he does have top 12 upside. Road courses also aren’t really his strength, but he knows that. He put in the time to run Friday’s ARCA race to get extra laps and familiarity with the track. He’s a risky play, but he has a pretty high ceiling among the drivers in this range.

Jack Wood ($6,400; Starting P9)

There are plenty of intriguing options in this $6K range on DraftKings. I am interested in Conner Jones ($6,200; Starting P31) for $200 less, but he doesn’t have a ton of road course experience and he’s been a bust when we’ve targeted him the last couple races. He did run the ARCA race on Friday to get some extra laps and he offers PD so he’s still a driver to consider. But another driver who ran the ARCA race was Jack Wood who was actually very fast in practice as well, and he’ll be back in the 51-truck for Kyle Busch Motorsports. Wood is a very frustrating driver to target in DFS. It seems like he’s due to wreck or cause a caution every single race that he competes in. But he looked solid in both practice sessions for ARCA and the Truck Series and this truck was one of the fastest at COTA with Kyle Busch behind the wheel. He probably over-qualified his ride so per usual, he’s just a deep-field Tournament play. If he can hang around and finish in the top ten, he could be optimal.

Austin Wayne Self ($6,000; Starting P27)

Do my eyes deceive me or do we really have an AWS sighting? Self no longer runs full-time. In fact, this is his first race of the 2023 season. Some of his best results in the Truck Series came on road courses. Remember the Daytona Road Course they ran twice in 2020 and 2021? AWS was top 15 at both. He started and finish 14^th in this race a year ago and was 16^th in his lone race at Watkins Glen a couple years back. He had three top 15 finishes at the Canadian Tire Motorsports Park in four races when the Truck Series used to race there. He even finished 16^th in the first race at COTA. So it appears that we know the ceiling might be a top 15 finish for AWS and he offers a little PD so he looks to be a solid paydown option in DFS. He wasn’t particularly fast in practice, but I still think he could finish between 15^th and 20^th.

Colby Howard ($5,800; Starting P36)

It’s incredibly annoying when Colby Howard doesn’t qualify. I had eyes on practice, but saw he only ran six laps and Twitter didn’t really confirm why he didn’t qualify. As far as his finishes at road courses go, he’s finished 24^th in both his Truck Series races at COTA, then was 19^th at Sonoma and top ten at Mid-Ohio in 2022. He’ll start outside the top 30 so I’m perfectly fine eating the chalk and plugging him into your Cash game lineups. But I might take a stand and avoid the Colby Howard value chalk in Tournaments because I think there are enough high upside plays in the $6,000-$7,500 range with less rostership.

Timmy Hill ($5,400; Starting P33)

I can’t really say anything bad about Timmy Hill for this race. He’s a driver in the $5K range that has top 20 upside. He posted the 22^nd fastest lap in practice, which is pretty solid for a driver in this price range. He finished 17^th here last year and has a couple other top 25 finishes on road courses in his career. He’s a good driver that just tends to keep his ride clean and he’s good enough for 20-25 fantasy points on DraftKings. Also, he and his wife announced over the weekend they’re expecting another child so he has that narrative going for him.

Landen Lewis ($5,100; Starting P22)

Lewis is making his Craftsman Truck Series debut, but unfortunately it’s with Roper Racing in the 04-truck, so the equipment isn’t great by any means. But he does have Roy Hornaday (four-time Truck Series champion) serving as his mentor of sorts and Hornaday really sings a ton of praise for Lewis. Lewis does have a road course win at Portland from the ARCA Series out West, but doesn’t have a ton of experience here and the equipment isn’t good. If you wanted more of a safety net in this range it’s likely Lawless Alan ($5,100; Starting P21) who did finish 17^th at COTA earlier this year and probably has the floor of a top 25 finish.

Dale Quarterley ($4,700; Starting P28)

I’m not saying load up on Quarterley for this race. But he’s the cheapest driver in the field and shouldn’t have an issue staying on the lead lap unless he has a mechanical issue. Which could happen because of the equipment, but those are difficult to predict. I’d be happy if we somehow squeezed just a little PD out of him and maybe got 20-24 fantasy points on DraftKings. I’m not holding my breath because he’s a much older driver than the field. At least he got extra laps in Friday’s ARCA race. He was running in the top eight for the first 18 laps before getting spun so the speed was still there. He even managed to work his way back into the top five. He’s the ultimate punt if you like the other five drivers in your lineup and he’s the only one that’ll fit as the sixth. He’s posted some solid results at Portland and Sonoma in the ARCA West Series the last two years.

NASCAR DFS Core Plays

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