Daily Fantasy NASCAR Track Preview: FireKeepers Casino 400

I don't know about you all, but I am ready to get back to an oval.

Whether it was having core DFS plays taken out by a rogue piece of curbing or a driver you bet being wrecked while leading, the tilt was palpable. And we didn't even get a fist fight out of it. Despair and darkness were the only winners.

This week, for the first time in almost a month, we're back to turning just left. The NASCAR Cup Series is heading to Michigan, its lone trip there for 2021 and its second to last race of the regular season.

With this return to an oval comes a return to seeking out lap-leaders in DFS. They'll run 200 laps in Sunday's race, giving us 20.0 FanDuel points for laps led. That's enough to alter the approach we've had the previous couple weeks.

Let's dig into that new approach now and outline how we should play things for this week's FireKeepers Casino 400.

Prone to Dominance

Relative to other oval races, 200 laps isn't all that much. It's actually on the lower end of the spectrum, more comparable to a superspeedway than a short track.

At Michigan, though, with speeds so high, we'll often see a single driver dominate. That has been true even with the implementation of the 550-horsepower rules package, which was intended to keep fields bunched together.

The first race in this package was in 2019. In that one, Joey Logano started on the pole, blocked the entire afternoon, led 163 laps, and won. He wasn't the fastest car in the field; they just couldn't pass him.

The second race that year was a bit more spread out with four drivers leading 40-plus laps, but we saw more dominance in last year's double-header. Kevin Harvick led 92 laps and won the first race. The next day, he started 20th but still managed to lead 90 laps and win. Those races were shorter, too, due to the double-header, meaning a single driver has led at least half the laps in three of four Michigan races utilizing this package.

There are two takeaways from what Harvick did last year. The first is that we should expect a fast car to emerge and lead a bunch of laps. The second is that they don't necessarily have to start at the front to be that year's dominant car.

Unfortunately for the field, the most likely driver to dominate is starting on the pole. That's Kyle Larson, a three-time winner at Michigan now driving for the summer's most dominant team. Even in a shorter race, we have full leeway to shovel plenty of Larson into our lineups.

The ability to make up ground is more applicable to our second stud, after we get someone like Larson, Kyle Busch, or Chase Elliott in our lineup (the three most likely winners in my simulations, all of whom are starting in the top seven). We could definitely jam in a second driver from that group in, but we have flexibility to check out some place-differential drivers for our second stud.

Let's say, for example, you love either William Byron or Brad Keselowski (who rank fifth and sixth in my win sims, respectively). They're starting in the middle of the pack. That's fully okay for our purposes in DFS. As long as they convert the model's positive view into a good run, they'll be a high-quality option.

The spot where place-differential may be tougher to find is in the value plays. There's a pretty decent falloff from the top 14 drivers in my model to the rest. Of those 14 drivers, only 4 (Keselowski, Byron, Joey Logano, and Christopher Bell) are starting lower than 14th. Of the top 20 drivers in my model, just three will start outside the top 20. We do have some options who may finish higher than they're starting, but at some point, we'll have to be okay using value plays closer to the front.

Combine this with the section on studs, and it's clear we'll have a much more front-centric approach to this week's race than the past two weeks. We want at least one stud at the front who can dominate, and with the way the starting order broke, we'll be living in the teens plenty for our second stud and value plays, as well.

This may not feel super comfortable -- place-differential races are often super easy to dissect -- but I'll take it. When the alternative is broken curbs and bruised bankrolls, this is the much better option in my book.