NASCAR DFS: Coca-Cola 600 Charlotte Motor Speedway Race Guide

The longest race on the NASCAR Cup series schedule is Sunday. The Coca-Cola 600. Charlotte Motor Speedway and its 1.5-mile Quad-oval plays host to the event yet again. This race, for all the fanfare and military tributes, which is great, is also a great cap on a terrific day of racing. Sunday starts with the Monaco Grand Prix then has the Indy 500 and finishes with this race — the Coke 600. Charlotte is the home of NASCAR with most of the teams based in the Queen City and most of the testing of the new car having happened at this track. That means these teams are intimately familiar with the track and what to expect in the new cars. So what can we expect? Let’s dig in to that.

Coke 600 DFS Strategy

As was mentioned above, it’s a long race. That means that not only is there a ton of laps led and fastest laps and laps completed points to get. It also means that drivers and cars will be tested to their limits. We usually see more technical issues in this race than most other tracks and that includes tire issues. We’ll touch on that more down below. For DFS strategy though, we’re loading up on laps led dominators at the top and then we’re nailing down drivers that can finish in the top-15 to top-20. One thing to be intrigued by, and this isn’t a hard and fast rule, but in the last five Coca-Cola 600s there are only 15 spots on the grid on DraftKings that have scored above average and 16 such spots on FanDuel. That narrows the focus a bit more as well. Rookies tend not to do quite as well as we’d think given the length of the race, nor do teams with so-so equipment. We’ll need to take shots somewhere but there is risks involved.

Tire Facts for Coca-Cola 600

Speaking of the tires, they’ve been the talk of the season all year. Goodyear and the teams are at loggerheads about who’s to blame for the tire issues. Teams are blaming the construction of the new 18” tires while Goodyear is saying the teams are setting the PSI too low and the tires are failing. Without a doubt though, we will see tires go down during the 600. It’s just a matter of time. This is the same combo of tires that were used at Darlington and it’s the same right sides that we’ve seen at Auto Club, Las Vegas, Darlington, Kansas, and Texas last week. The teams will have 13 sets of tires for the race which means they only have to go about 31 laps per set while fuel should be about 56-68 laps. That makes pit strategy interesting.

Stats To Know For Coke 600

• We’ve seen the pole sitters lead a ton of laps in two of the last five races here, but we’ve also seen them drop back to finish P8 or P9 in the other three.
• There are four stages for this race that are 100 laps each. It’s the only race with four stages.
• As temps cool during the race we will see some cars get stronger and some get weaker.
• There are four drivers in the field to have at least four top-10s in the last five Coke 600s
• There are five drivers in the field with average Driver Ratings of more than 100 in the last five Coke 600s.
• At the last five intermediate style tracks, there are only two drivers in the field with at least four top-10s.

Last Five Coca-Cola 600 Race Stats

The table below shows the number of drivers to reach each stat-type over the last five Coca-Cola 600 races with Race 1 being the most recent.

For the tables below:

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 600 races for the data.

The Similar Races table: The data is comprised of stats from the last 5 races at Auto Club, Las Vegas, Kansas, Darlington, and Texas Fall last year.

The Weekly Track Stats Table: The stats are based on every race at Charlotte since 2012 based on starting spot regardless of the driver in that starting spot.