DraftKings NASCAR DFS Picks for Kansas: Fantasy NASCAR Strategy and Picks for the Hollywood Casino 400

Another week of the NASCAR playoffs, another rainout of qualifying and practice for this week’s race at Kansas Speedway.

Kansas is a 1.5-mile, cookie-cutter oval, so we have plenty of race data on this track type, but with no practice there’s no practice FLAGS once again.

And with 267 laps scheduled, dominators will be anywhere from one to three, but the third dominator isn’t even necessarily a lock to be in the optimal lineup with the fewer total laps.

As always, be sure to check out my NASCAR projections in the NASCAR Models on FantasyLabs, complete with floor, ceiling, median, and ownership projections.

My projections, along with Stephen Young’s from RotoGrinders, are available in our NASCAR DFS package. You can read more about what the package entails here.

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 250,000 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.

So, without further ado, here’s my strategy guide and NASCAR DFS picks for the Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas.

Hollywood Casino 400 Cash Game Picks

Alex Bowman ($7300): Bowman is the easiest cash-game play on this slate by starting 33rd from the rained-out qualifying metric.

While Hendrick Motorsports has struggled this year, my model still expects Bowman to finish inside the top 10 at a 22% clip. Thanks to his low $7k price tag, he can even finish outside the top 10 and make the optimal lineup plenty.

So even though my model factors in the poor form of his team, there’s still plenty of floor by essentially only being able to move up.

Kyle Larson or Denny Hamlin … or Christopher Bell?: This is the big question for cash games, and my model gives all three of these drivers near equal average dominator points.

But when we factor in the full distribution, Hamlin gets the nod with a higher floor and ceiling than the other two while coming in at the middle price point of the trio.

Chase Briscoe ($9600): You’ll have to take a stand on one of the big three, but Briscoe comes in at a much cheaper price tag and still has dominant upside.

Plus he comes with place differential that the big three don’t, thanks to a 23rd-place starting spot after late issues at Bristol made his qualifying metric poor.

With Joe Gibbs Racing, Briscoe has finished fourth, fourth, and third in his three races at Kansas and has a top-five finish in five of seven starts at Kansas, Las Vegas, and Chicagoland, the three medium-high tire wear, 1.5-mile ovals.

Hollywood Casino 400 Tournament Picks

Dominators: Here are my top dominators by likelihood of dominating:

1. Denny Hamlin
2. Kyle Larson
3. Christopher Bell
   
   (gap to show tier)
   
4. Tyler Reddick

These four are the four that separate themselves from the rest of the pack in my simulations. Yes, Briscoe, Bubba Wallace, Ty Gibbs, or others can dominate, but they do so infrequently enough that they all just kind of fall in the “other” dominator category with a group of about 6-7 drivers.

Riley Herbst ($6500): Herbst will be chalky, but I like the chalk for this DFS slate because it’s quite a predictable track overall.

Herbst has had several finishes inside the top-15 this season at this track type, and most recently at a 1.5-mile track, he finished 10th while the whole 23XI Racing team had great showings at Chicagoland.

A cheap driver with that much place differential is a driver I want quite a bit of.

Ty Dillon ($4700): If you want to stack some heavy hitters, Ty Dillon starts dead last and can only go up. His most recent finish at a 1.5-mile track is 20th at Chicagoland, which would be incredible at this price point.

Using him doesn’t fit the common roster construction, but one-third of of the time we get two main dominators at Kansas and similar tracks.

If we get two main big-dollar dominators and another top-dollar guy like Reddick, Blaney, or Briscoe hits a strong finish, it might behoove you to look at Dillon so you can get some good bang for your buck with your final two roster spots.

Pictured: Alex Bowman
Photo credit: Randy Sartin, Imagn