NASCAR DFS Playbook: Kansas Lottery 300

Three races to go in the season… Where does the time go? Xfinity heads to Kansas for 200 laps around Kansas’ 1.5-mile track. This should be a far more entertaining weekend than last week at Texas. Passing is generally easier here so the race should be more competitive. As has been the case for most 1.5-mile tracks, the race will be broken into 45-45-110 lap segments with a competition caution following lap 20. We’ll have about 130-140 dominator points available depending on how many cautions we see so approaching Saturday’s race with a two-dominator approach is certainly in play. I do like the idea for one-dom builds because you can get a little more balanced with those builds and you don’t have to dumpster dive to unreliable drivers all that much. I’ll probably do about 60-70% of my builds with two dominators and the remaining builds might be a little more contrarian with one.

As you can see, nobody has qualified for the Championship race in Phoenix yet since John Hunter Nemechek won last week’s race and he’s not playoff eligible in this series. Allmendinger and Cindric are looking good for making the final race in Phoenix, but for the remaining six drivers if you win, you’re in and there are some guys outside the top four that could make this race interesting.

Player Pool

Ty Gibbs ($11,200; Starting P10) It’s hard to really tell what Gibbs is most excited for tomorrow: this race or the ARCA championship race Saturday night. I’m guessing it’s this race simply because of this tweet from Pockrass earlier in the week…

So yeah, with the ARCA championship basically in the bag, I think it’s safe to say Gibbs wants to turn his Xfinity fortunes around. He’s the most expensive driver on the slate, but he offers PD and this car just won Texas last weekend. He hasn’t returned value in his last couple races, but it’s not for lack of effort. I think the recent performances could suppress his ownership so I’ll be on board with him in all formats. Earlier in this year’s ARCA race at Kansas, Gibbs went flag-to-flag leading every lap on his way to a victory.

Austin Cindric ($10,800; Starting P2) You have to like Cindric’s chances here to win, or at the very least, get a solid finish. Coming into Kansas, he has five straight finishes in the top eight including four finishes in the top five and a pair of runner-up’s to boot. He’s led 174 total laps in his last five races with 88 fastest laps as well. If he doesn’t win he can at least get some dominator points and starting on the front row on Saturday gives him a good chance to do so. Historically this isn’t one of his better tracks. He was the runner-up here in July of 2020 but in the other three races he finished outside the top 20. I’m going to give more weight to his recent performances rather than track history.

Harrison Burton ($9,900; Starting P7) I’m going to get questions as to why Allmendinger and Allgaier aren’t in the Playbook. And it’s not easy leaving out those two, but the price tags on the playoff drives are all up there. No playoff driver is off the table today because it’s a must win for some of them. Allmendinger hasn’t wowed me lately and I know some might disagree, and that’s fine. Allgaier hasn’t been great at Kansas and he can be a letdown at times. I will still mix them into a couple lineups if I opt to max-enter the Happy Hour. Burton finished 11th here a year ago, and third in July of 2020. He was regularly running up front in both races. Burton has a chance of stealing a win in these next two races and I like that he’ll come in at lower ownership than Allmendinger (I hope).

Daniel Hemric ($9,500; Starting P1) Dare I suggest that Daniel Hemric potentially finds himself as a chalky option in GPP’s? It’s certainly possible, but since nobody has any faith that he’ll win his ownership likely won’t be crazy. But a win would lock him into the championship race in Phoenix and he’d be the only driver to be locked in. Three years ago at Kansas he finished as the runner-up here while leading 128 laps. Last year he logged another runner-up finish so he’s been solid here. Make fun of him all you want for never winning a race, but if he runs clean he’s typically finishing very well. Let’s also consider that over his last four races he’s finished 5th, 4th, 3rd, and 2nd in that order. If that trend continues then we could finally see him in victory lane.

Brandon Jones ($9,300; Starting P9) I don’t like playing Brandon Jones. Nay, I hate playing Brandon Jones. No, you know what? I absolutely loathe rostering Brandon Jones with every fiber of my being. I’m sure he’s a nice kid, but for DFS purposes there is too much variance with this guy. But he’s won here twice and I know I’d be a fool to exclude him simply based off personal feelings. I guess I should cut him some slack. He struggled to finish races consistently earlier in the season. But he’s started to hit his stride a bit once the playoffs started especially with five straight finishes in the top ten including four of those inside the top six. He needs a win to move on to Phoenix and this might be his best shot.

Landon Cassill ($8,100; Starting P38) The options in this $8K range aren’t great. I may look at drivers like Snider, Moffitt, and Herbst as contrarian options, but I’m not crazy about any of them. Cassill is probably my favorite option as he’s starting P38 and we know he can get a top 20 out of this car, maybe even a little better. Most people could easily flock to Jade Buford for $800 cheaper starting three spots ahead of Cassill. I’ll touch on Buford shortly, but Cassill may be the better leverage play, but you really need him to gain about 20 spots of PD and finish there. He certainly can do it, but we’ve seen him bust before as well. I still like him from an ownership perspective.

Brandon Brown ($7,800; Starting P23) There’s nothing special about Brown this week aside from his resume. He finished 13th and 11th here last year grabbing some PD in both races in 2020. If he can register another top 15 then he’s getting close to hitting value. He wrecked out of Texas last week, but has had some top 15 runs this year on intermediate tracks. Like I said, nothing that’ll wow us, but he can be a strong play this week.

Garrett Smithley ($7,400; Starting P39) Smithley might have to go to the rear due to the driver change, but so what? He was already starting 39th anyway. Smithley’s had some good runs in this 17-car. He finished 24th at Vegas-1, 25th at Texas-1, and 19th at Talladega. Realistically he needs to finish about 22nd to hit value, but he’s a fine target if pivoting off the next driver.

Jade Buford ($7,300; Starting P35) I was initially pretty excited about Buford’s prospects, but if there was one driver to fade due to projected ownership, it might be Buford. Obviously he’s a great PD target, but this could be a race I go light on him in hopes that he gets caught up in some wreckage. He’s had some decent runs on 1.5-mile tracks this year, but also some poor performances as well. He finished 17th at Charlotte, 16th at Texas-1, and 17th at Atlanta-2. But he also finished 30th at Vegas-1, 26th at Atlanta-1, 26th at Vegas-2 and 39th last week at Texas-2. We know he has top 20 upside and could finish there, but at this price tag, in GPP’s I may going light on the obvious PD play this week for other leverage options.

Ryan Sieg ($7,100; Starting P14) He may not always be consistent, but dammit does he provide tilt. I loved Sieg as a play last week and while he did hit value, it was a process to get there. He took some early damage with a wreck and it looked like we weren’t going to cash with him. But he did work his way back into it and finished 14th to hit value after spending most of the race off the lead lap. This week he doesn’t offer as much PD, but still can flex that top 10-15 upside. He has four straight top tens at Kansas including a pair of top fives in last year’s races and he actually led a combined 44 laps between both races as well. We’re tempting fate asking him to come through for us in back-to-back weeks so exposure should still be limited to just GPP’s, but I am looking to be heavier than the field.

Jeremy Clements ($6,800; Starting P19) This is a really nice GPP spot for Clements. I loved him last week, but he didn’t quite come through. He ended up finishing 29th and this week he starts P19. That’s perfectly fine. I still like this spot for him despite the slightly elevated price tag. Clements tends to run inside the top 15 here and over his last four races at Kansas he’s finished 15th, 12th, 6th, and 10th. And I still really like how he’s looked on 1.5-mile tracks this year. He hasn’t returned the same results in the playoffs at tracks like Vegas and Texas, but given the track history I still don’t mind targeting him this week. He just needs to finished 14th for 5X value and given his track record there’s a fair chance of that happening.

Patrick Emerling ($6,600; Starting P34) The results haven’t been there for Emerling, but he’s once again in the 23-car for Our Motorsports and we know the car is decent. At Richmond he was running pretty well with an average position of 26th, but there were times he was flirting with a top 20 run. The finishes just haven’t been there. But maybe third time’s a charm? He will need to gain about ten spots of PD for us to be content with his performance. I’m on the fence with him for Cash games, but if he can finish the race where he’s capable of running then this is a nice value play.

Bayley Currey ($6,500; Starting P22) Same narrative as before. Since moving to the 15-car for JD Motorsports, Currey has done great finishing 13th at Vegas and 17th last week at Texas. Due to the solid runs he’s starting a bit higher, but if he sneaks into the top 15 again he’s hitting value. I think the starting spot could scare some people off him, but we know he can finish well with this car.

David Starr ($5,300; Starting P33) Alright where do we begin here? We’ve seen Starr hit excessive value in a variety of races. In five of his last nine races he’s hit at least 23 DraftKings points with four of those performances returning at least 35. But on the other end of the spectrum, he’s had some absolute duds. He’s bounced around between three different cars this year, but has had some respectable finishes in the 66-car. Moreover, this is actually one of Starr’s best tracks. In eight career races here he has an average finish of 22.0 including four straight finishes in the top 25. If he can finish around there on Saturday he’s hitting value.

Core Drivers

For what it’s worth, I don’t love Cash games this week. In general, I don’t trust the drivers in this series enough to play Cash games. So I’m sticking with GPP’s once again and seeing what happens so the drivers below are the ones I believe are great GPP core plays. I’ll be in the chat to help answer Cash lineup questions, but I haven’t built a Cash lineup that I really like.