DraftKings NASCAR DFS Picks for Daytona: Fantasy NASCAR Strategy and Picks for the Coke Zero Sugar 400

The final race of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series regular season takes place tonight at Daytona International Speedway.

Since Daytona is a drafting track, the ideal strategy at these tracks is always to take non-backmarkers starting in the back. That means we’ll be looking to stash guys like Michael McDowell, Corey LaJoie, Todd Gilliland, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., among others, in our cash-game lineups.

Any driver starting at the back is worthy of being in some percentage of a multi-entry portfolio, but the big names starting in the back third of the field tend to be too chalky.

As such, I’ll just give my low-percentage tournament picks this week. Drafting races, which have a large degree of uncertainty, present the perfect opportunity to get contrarian, which is why I’ll just be focusing on the lower-owned plays for tournament picks.

Before we jump into my picks, don’t forget all my NASCAR projections can be found in the NASCAR Models on FantasyLabs, complete with floor, ceiling, median, and ownership projections.

Let’s not skip the best part — my Perfect% metric — a metric that tells you how often certain racers appear in the optimal lineup when running 10,000 race simulations.

And don’t forget about the tools that FantasyLabs has to offer, like our Lineup Optimizer to effortlessly create up to 300 lineups, or our Lineup Builder if you like to hand-build your lineups.

Here are my NASCAR DFS picks for Saturday’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway.

 

Daytona DraftKings DFS Tournament Strategy

Teammate Stacking: There are 17 drivers who could win their way into the playoffs by winning this race. That means if they are in a position up front late in the race along with a teammate who doesn’t need the win, they could receive the benefit of a push to the win from their teammate.

Top teammate combinations to stack while not using too many drivers starting too far forward are:

1. Todd Gilliland, pushed by Michael McDowell
2. Alex Bowman, pushed by William Byron
3. Chase Elliott, pushed by William Byron
4. Daniel Suarez, pushed by Ross Chastain
5. Erik Jones, pushed by Josh Berry
6. Austin Dillon, pushed by Kyle Busch

Underweight candidates: Alex Bowman, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Corey LaJoie, and Michael McDowell all project to be incredibly chalky thanks to deep starting positions in the 30s.

While I do have Bowman projected to be in the optimal lineup 35.3% of the time, it’s still a chaotic race, and I expect he’ll be in more lineups than optimal. Ideally, we’d want to go a little underweight on Bowman while increasing his correlation with teammate William Byron who starts 27th and could potentially push him to the win.

Stenhouse is locked into the playoffs, and while he will go for the win, he should be in too many lineups for such a chaotic race.

Michael McDowell projects to be the highest rostered driver on the slate but only comes in around 30% optimal. Ideally, go a little underweight on McDowell, but make sure to bump up his correlation with Todd Gilliland (more on him later).

Finally, Corey LaJoie is always a popular play at drafting tracks thanks to his strength at this track type. However, he’s still in underfunded equipment, and while he does have a teammate in Ty Dillon, Dillon also could win his way into the playoffs and isn’t quite as strong as LaJoie. Thus it seems plausible LaJoie may be on his own in the late going if he survives the chaos.

Stack the backmarkers: Last year, absolute chaos took place in this very race. So much so that one bettor turned a $13.49 bet into nearly a million dollars.

How did he do that? By picking four backmarkers to finish inside the top 10.

That’s because these drivers are correlated. They typically hang back, waiting for all the wrecks to occur in front of them. Then when a few late restarts take place, they are all in position to finish inside the top 15.

In addition to last year’s wild result, the year before, in 2021, three back markers finished inside the top 10.

There’s definitely a correlation between these guys, and they all project to be under-rostered. Make sure to bump B.J. McLeod, Brennan Poole, J.J. Yeley, and Ty Dillon’s correlation with each other up in the optimizer.

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Daytona DraftKings DFS Tournament Picks

One of Daniel Suarez or Austin Dillon: Both Suarez and Dillon are in must-win situations, and both have very capable teammates that could push them to the win.

The issue? They both can’t win.

So while it’s possible they both finish at the front, it’s certainly less likely, giving them a bit of a negative correlation.

They both project for usage near their optimal, but I don’t mind if you want to go slightly overweight on each, given my model can’t account for the specific must-win situation.

Justin Haley ($6000): Haley is a great drafting track driver and would love nothing more than to win his way into the playoffs.

By starting 28th, he has the chalky William Byron just ahead of him and the chalky Bowman and Stenhouse within four spots behind him.

However, Haley’s optimal percentage runs only around 10 percentage points below those drivers, while his usage projects to be half of (or even less than half of) those other options.

Todd Gilliland ($5900): Gilliland has had really unfortunate drafting track results, but not for a lack of ability.

Gilliland is often found running inside the top 15 but has found himself in the midst of incidents not of his own doing more often than not.

That luck is bound to change at some point. Ideally, that point would be today.

Make sure to stack him with teammate Michael McDowell as noted above.

Brennan Poole ($4900): Should things get absolutely chaotic, Brennan Poole is a driver I want a lot of.

Poole claimed three top-16 finishes in his lone full-time Cup Series season back in 2020 with Premium Motorsports.

Premium Motorsports was not on the same level that his current team Rick Ware Racing is. Yes, RWR is the second-worst team on the grid aside from Live Fast Motorsports, but they also are much closer in speed to the leaders than Premium Motorsports was three years ago.

Poole also finished fifth earlier this year in the Xfinity Series in underfunded equipment at Talladega.

Poole is very talented and always seems to get more out of his equipment than most drivers. If he survives the chaos, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s able to make some solo moves to get a solid top-10 finish.

Talladega DraftKings DFS Paul Menard Pick of the Week

The Penske cars are always strong at drafting tracks, and there’s no reason to think otherwise this weekend.

That makes Austin Cindric ($7000) a sneaky good play. He’s a solid drafting-track racer so far in his young cup career, tallying three top-three finishes and another top 10 to go along with those in just eight starts.

The second-year Penske driver should get strong pushes from teammates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney, who are two of the best drafting track drivers in the whole series.

Logano and/or Blaney will be glued to Cindric’s bumper in the late going as long as Cindric is in contention, so his 16th-place starting position comes with race-winning upside.

That would surely get him in the optimal lineup.