NASCAR DFS Pit Stop: Daytona 500 Sunday February 17th

Welcome to NASCAR DFS Pit Stop for the Daytona 500, the opening race of the 2019 season! This is the Super Bowl of NASCAR and a win here will also automatically qualify the driver for the playoffs at the end of the season. After a long week starting with the Clash last Sunday, followed up by the Duels on Thursday the big race is finally here.

• Just a note when reading, when I use Average Finish in each section for the driver I am writing about that average is for the previous 4 races at this track (unless the driver has not competed in 4 races yet at the track)

NASCAR DFS: Leaders of the Pack (Dominators)

Brad Keselowski ($10,600)

Qualified: 35th

Avg Finish: 31.5

Keselowski has a disappointing week with a poor qualifying effort and then the 37th place finish in the Xfinity series race on Saturday after dealing with a malfunctioning roof flap. Keselowski hasn’t had a ton of success at Daytona the last 2 years, but he has led 46 laps in the last 4 races. With a starting position of 35 Keselowski has plenty of room to gain place differential points and that’s what has me interested in using him

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. ($9,800)

Qualified: 5th

Avg Finish: 19.5

Stenhouse has a history of performing well at restrictor plate tracks, winning 2 races in 2017 (the only 2 wins he had) at restrictor plate tracks with one each at Talladega and Daytona. In 12 races at Daytona Stenhouse has 2 top 5’s and 3 top 10’s.

Also consider: Joey Logano ($10,400)

NASCAR DFS: Middle of the Pack

Ryan Blaney ($9,000) 

Qualified: 14th

Avg Finish: 18.8

Ryan Blaney is my favorite NASCAR DFS driver this weekend. I think he can possibly come out of this race with the highest point total overall. Blaney has spent 70.3% of time running inside the top 15 in the last 4 races at Daytona and has also led 129 laps over that span (avg of 32.25 per race).

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Erik Jones ($8,200)

Qualified: 28th

Avg Finish: 21.3

Jones the 8th best combined avg practice times this week and ran the 4th fastest lap in the third practice session (the last session where all drivers ran) with a top speed of 200.156. Clearly Jones has a fast car and if he can stay out of trouble he should easily be able to pick up a top 10 finish on Sunday.

Kyle Larson ($7,800)

Qualified: 26th

Avg Finish: 22.3

Kyle Larson had a great 2018 and will look to keep the momentum from that season rolling this weekend. Last season Larson had 20 top 10’s and also averaged 43.3 DKFP with an average finish of 12.1.

Also consider: 2018 Daytona 500 winner Austin Dillon ($7,600)

NASCAR DFS: Back of the Pack (Value)

Ryan Preece ($6,500)

Qualified: 21st

Avg Finish: N/A

Preece had a great practice run on Saturday finishing with the 3rd best speed of 200.169 and a lap time of 44.962. Since he’s never ran a MENCS race at Daytona we don’t have loop data on, but at his price and the fact his car has gotten progressively faster throughout the week he could be worth a GPP flyer.

Chris Buescher ($6,300)

Qualified: 15th

Avg Finish: 13.8

Buescher’s 13.8 avg finish is 6th best of all drivers in the field who have run more than 1 race at Daytona. In his 4 previous races Buescher has spent 42.9% of his time inside the top 15 which is a good indication that Buescher will not cost you place differential points.

Michael McDowell ($5,900)

Qualified: 34th

Avg Finish: 13.5

McDowell is my favorite value play for today’s race. Over the past 4 Daytona races McDowell has run nearly 60% of time in the top 15 as well as leading 20 laps (average of 5 per race) and 22 fastest laps. McDowell has run inside the top 15 in practice all week, so it seems his race trim is running great, but his qualifying trim was not too good, but that doesn’t matter now and we can take advantage of the positive place differential points now.

Also consider: Bubba Wallace (has been fast in practice all week) ($7,200), David Ragan ($6,200), Casey Mears ($5,400)

NASCAR DFS : Place Differential Driver

Kyle Busch ($9,600)

Qualified: 31st

Avg Finish: 29

Kyle has had a pretty fast car all week running faster speeds each practice session and had the fastest car in the last practice with the entire field involved. I honestly think Kyle could win this race and even get close to 100 DKFP.

NASCAR DFS: Driver to fade

William Byron ($6,800) and Alex Bowman ($8,000)

Byron and Bowman are starting on the front row today and I don’t really think either of them will win this race. If you wanted to play one of them, Byron would be my choice because of his price. Neither car ran in the 15 of the 3rd practice session and you could see a negative 10-15 place differential point day for both of these drivers.

Thank you for reading my NASCAR DFS Pit Stop article this week and make sure you look for my daily NHL DFS Man Advantage piece each night of the NHL schedule. Be sure to check out Fantasy CPR daily for all your DFS needs, and remember all content is ALWAYS FREE here!