NASCAR DFS: Coke Zero Sugar 400 Track Breakdown

Let the chaos ensue! It’s the final race of the regular season and it’s Daytona, which under normal circumstances is wild and unpredictable, but now with a final playoff spot on the line, it’s sure to be even more so. We already saw a crazy race in the Daytona 500 that came all the way down to the start/finish line to determine a winner and saw last lap crashes and blocking galore. Just imagine what happens at the end of this race with what’s at stake.

As you likely know by now, or heard on the podcast, the trick to this week is simply having the drivers that avoid the wrecks. That saying “easier said than done” comes to mind though. This is truly a dartboard race where anyone is in play and while below we do show how well they’ve been at Daytona and both restrictor plate tracks recently, those averages don’t always hold true. This weekend’s race the cars will be a bit different because NASCAR has decided to reduce the horsepower, and thus the speed, in the cars to up the safety of them a bit coming off a wild race at Talladega a few months back. It won’t really make a strategic difference for DFS though but it is worth mentioning.

Strategy Notes:

Speaking of strategy, this week’s is a wild car as to who to play, but the strategy is pretty clear. We’re not paying attention to laps led as numerous drivers will have at least a few laps led and a few will have more than 20 but out of 160 laps, that’s not enough to make a difference. We’re looking for drivers who have stayed on the track the most in the last five and 10 races on plate tracks and we’re looking for drivers who are starting toward the back who can hopefully avoid the pile ups. Over the last five Coke Zero Sugar 400s, between four and seven drivers who started outside the top-12 finished in the top-10 and in that same span, seven of the top-10 scoring starting spots in terms of DFS scoring have started P28 or further back. Leaving a lot of money on the table is almost required this week and you’ll see lineups that have $10K left as the drivers that generally average the highest point totals tend to cost the least. There are still top-10 starting drivers who finish in the top-10 and have consistently but when building lineups this week you really only want one driver starting in the top-10.

Facts To Know:

• There are only four drivers in the field with two or more top-five finishes in the last five Coke Zero 400s.
• Not a single driver has a top-15 rate of more than 70-percent in the last five Daytona races.
• There are seven different drivers with an average PD mark in the double-digits and nine total at six or more spots of PD.
• Three spots in the top-seven starting spots are among the three worst scoring starting spots in DFS.
• Only one driver in the field has had more than five top-five finishes over the last 10 races at restrictor plate races.

The table below shows the number of drivers to reach each stat-type over the last five races similar races with Race 1 being the most recent.

For the tables below:

* The Category Rankings table: The numbers in the tables for each column represent that driver's rank amongst the other in the field for that particular stat. They are ranked with 1 being the best in each column.

* The DFS Scoring Table: Race 1 is the most recent race in the sample size with Race 5 being the earliest. We are using the Last 5 Coke Zero 400 races for the data.