NASCAR DFS: Big Machine Hand Sanitizer 400 Track Breakdown

Don’t be fooled by the name of the race...it’s “The Brickyard” on Sunday as a great way to celebrate the holiday weekend. One of the most famous tracks in the realm of racing it doesn’t need much of an introduction. This is the same track that the Indy 500 is traditionally held on, which this year got moved back from the original Memorial Day weekend date, but it is a different layout than the Xfinity cars will be racing on on Saturday as they are taking on the road course.

The rectangular oval, as it’s called, has four distinct corners separated by two long straightaways making up the front and back straights while between the corners are the so-called short chutes. The turns are banked at nine degrees for each of them and the straightaways are perfectly flat all the way across the wide racing surface. While all of the turns are banked the same and seemingly have the same radius and shape to them, drivers will tell you that each one requires a different way of driving them to put together a fast lap here. Pit road, in general, can be one of the easier ones to get on on the schedule however it does tend to be a bit tighter than you might expect when it comes to the real estate available to maneuver.

Restarts here can be quite wild as they vie for the tight space heading into Turn 1 coming off the wide home stretch but after a few laps, single-file racing is typically what takes place and picking up spots can be tough as the drivers have to pass one car at a time using the aero the right way to pull it off. That being said, though each of the last five races here has had at least five drivers move up double-digits in place differential and a couple of have 10 or more drivers pull off the feat. If we want a track to compare Indy to, Pocono from last weekend is about as close as it gets in terms of distance and flatness of the corners and track and the setups that typically work well at the track.

Courtesy of FRCS

This has been a track that Chevy has typically done well at in the past, winning 17 of the last 26 races but only one in the last five, Kasey Kahne in 2017, but that was a wreck fest and a rain-delayed race as well.

It is a smaller sample size than we’re usually used to seeing but the stats are still pretty clear that if a driver is going to win, they have far better chances starting in the top-five than elsewhere. Half of the winners have come from the top-five starting spots while half have come from the field in the 26 races the Cup series has run at Indianapolis.

Strategy Notes

With 160 laps in the race, laps led will definitely be in play on DraftKings especially since they tally up to more points than FanDuel will give out. The way that DK has messed with salaries actually gives us a shot to be a bit more contrarian with the value plays we can play to get place differential upside on our roster. On FD the name of the game is getting the high finishers on the roster but again there are some great plays for doing that that can vary from the expected chalk this week. Guys starting up front have been big point producers on both sites in previous races here so we are still going to need a few elite drivers on the roster.

Core Drivers By Tier

Tier 1 - Kevin Harvick

• Harvick won this race last year and has been incredibly consistent at Indy over the last several races.

• He has the best average finish of 7.5 in the field over the last eight races here with six top-10s.

• Harvick and his team had his car dialed in at Pocono last weekend with a win and runner-up finish and with a P11 starting spot, he should have the car to move up and do well here.

Tier 2 - William Byron

• Byron had a top-five finish here last year and has generally run well here in his Cup races.

• A positive 14.0 place differential in two races here give him one of the best marks in the field.

• Byron has three top-10s in the last five races this season and his 9.8 average finish is one of the best in that span.

Tier 3 - Dillon Brothers

• Austin Dillon and Ty Dillon both run well here in the last four with average finishes of better than P17 for each of them.

• Ty Dillon has a better PD mark at positive 10.0 in the last few races and he’s starting further back on Sunday giving that PD again.

• Austin Dillon is starting inside the top-20 but if he pulls off his third top-15 finish in the last five races this year, he’ll hit value fairly easily.

Contrarian Play - Matt Kenseth

• He’s coming off two top-15 finishes at Pocono including the race on Saturday where he moved up 11 spots.

• Kenseth has three top-15s in the last four Indy races he’s run with two of those being top-fives.

• He’s one of only four drivers with an average rating of 100+ in the last five or more races here.

Fade - Martin Truex Jr.

• Truex has gone backward about 15 spots a race here in the last four races with only one notable finish.

• While he had a solid weekend at Pocono, he’s been up and down this year in terms of DFS scoring.

• The “value” he provides at this salary on both sites this week is only 1.5 on DK and 2.2 on FD which means he’s severely over-priced.

Last Four Indy Races

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

Top-20 Drivers Over Last 8 Indy Races

Top-20 Drivers At Similar Races

(Indy and Pocono)

Momentum

The driver and team momentum tables have been made to match the last four and eight race tables with range of finish instead of the prior wins, top-fives, top-10s, and top-15 columns. They will also show those stats for the last five races of this season prior to the current week’s race to show you who’s been hot and who’s been cold.

Drivers

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

Team

Finish Ranges By Starting Spot Ranges

This table shows where the ranges of starting spots have finished regardless of driver in those spots over the last four Atlanta races. The left-hand column shows the starting spots in groups of five and the columns going across show the finish spots in groups of five up to outside the top-20.

Weekly Rankings

Race Hist, Recent Form, Track Hist, Type Hist are all ranked on average finish position over the last four races at the track, five races this season, eight races at this track, and similar races respectively. The Avg. Rating and Top-15 % columns are ranked on those categories in the last four races at this track. The L8 PD column ranks the position differential over the last eight races from best (most positive) to worst (most negative).

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

DFS Value Averages

This replaces the DFS Scoring Averages table that had been here. Instead, we have the DFS Value figures instead. We have taken their points scored over the last two and five races on each site and averaged those out and then divided that average by their salary divided by 1,000.

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4