🏎 NASCAR DFS: O’Reilly Auto Parts 253 Preview for DraftKings & FanDuel | 2/16

Following Michael McDowell‘s improbable win in the Daytona 500, NASCAR is staying put at Daytona. However, this weekend sees the action shift from the oval to the road course for the O’Reilly Auto Parts 253. Let’s jump into this week’s preview and highlight what you should be aware of before you start making your NASCAR DFS lineups on DraftKings and FanDuel later this week.

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O’Reilly Auto Parts 253 NASACR DFS Preview

A Rant You Can Skip Over…

I don’t know about you but I feel a bit “over-exposed” to this “Roval.” Just last Tuesday we saw 35 laps run around this track for the Busch Clash. Two weeks prior, the track hosted the Rolex 24 as the IMSA WeatherTech Series raced around the 3.56-mile road course, and only six months ago we were here at the Daytona Road Course for the Go Bowling 235. Now we’re back this weekend in what will be the first of seven road course races in 2021 with the O’Reilly Auto Parts 253.

A track that was supposed to have some glorious mystique as a rarely used venue has now succumbed to NASCAR’s “beat the dead horse” mentality. If NASCAR finds something works successfully, you can bet they will keep trotting it out until the fans/drivers are sick of it. If you think I’m being overdramatic, look at which intermediate tracks gained a second race this season: Darlington and Atlanta. Fans liked the racing there enough, in part due to their peculiarities, and now both venues have gained a second race. What we forget is the reason why Darlington, for example, lost its second race back in 2004.

Going down this rabbit trail will get me into an unnecessary commentary about the Bristol dirt race. However, I’ll save that rant for when we get to Bristol in March. At least we will get to witness some practice and multiple millions of dollars getting trashed that weekend.

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Something Positive

There is one note on the upside about this weekend. In NASCAR’s fervor to return to the Daytona Road Course — after having to find a replacement for the race to be held at Auto Club Speedway — at least we have some data to look back on. A sad reminder: For the 2021 season, NASCAR will neither hold practice or qualifying at any race that the Series is not seeing its first race at, excluding this past weekend, the Coke 600 and the season finale at Phoenix. This means the only time we will see cars on the track before a race will be at COTA, the Bristol Dirt Race and Road America.

So if having practice data is pertinent to your process for NASCAR DFS, it’s going to be a rough year. Once more, all we’re left with to gauge drivers is how they’re currently doing and how they’ve done in the past at whichever tracks. The downside this week is in no way am I using Daytona to help predict how drivers will do this Sunday on the road course. However, we do have data from the Go Bowling 235 to help inform our decisions.

Go Bowling 235

In our first road race of the 2020 season, Chase Elliott won his third straight of that format. Despite 13 lead changes, the race revolved around three drivers; Elliott, Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin. The trio finished first, second and third while also leading 60 of the 65 laps. In fact, after a bit of shuffling in the first stage, only one other driver (Kaz Grala) would lead a lap besides those three.

I remember my main concern with this race was just how chaotic it might be. What was this road race going to look like with no practice time for any of these drivers? We all remember the mess the first Roval race at Charlotte was. How was this going to be with absolutely zero practice?

In pure irony, the first and second segments went caution-free. The third segment would see two cautions, though. However, one was for rain (so teams could have the option to put on rain tires) and for Kyle Busch when he cut down a tire on lap 61.

It’s this late caution that puts a giant asterisk on any box score numbers from the Go Bowling 235. This caution bunched the field back up together, 32 cars on the lead lap at the time, and allowed teams to go outside the box on pit strategy. For example, Chris Buescher’s average running position that day was 15.6, yet Buescher finished in fifth place. A 10-position difference is gigantic. On the flip side, following the final pit stop, Ryan Blaney came out 12th. In what can only be described as the worst three laps of his career, Blaney fell like a rock before finally finishing 31st.

Analyzing the Optimal Lineups

With so few laps (65), total scores were definitely down on both DraftKings and FanDuel.

However, it’s not the scores that stand out. Judging by the salary cap used, you could have easily assumed these were optimal NASCAR DFS lineups from the Daytona 500 and not the road course. While the late caution added to create this scenario, this sort of outcome was on the verge of happening regardless. An optimal lineup had salaries that were meaningless (more apt to happen in shorter races), and what mattered more was raw points.

For example, despite leading the second-most laps and finishing second, Hamlin only scored the fifth-most DraftKings points (48.5) and sixth-most FanDuel points (48.1). Buescher’s out-of-context fifth-place finish gave him the second-most DraftKings and FanDuel points. Furthermore, the third-highest-scoring driver on both sites was Daytona 500 winner Michael McDowell. While I wouldn’t intentionally plan on lineups falling this short in leftover salary cap, perhaps it’s not the worst idea to tell Fantasy Cruncher to not have a minimum threshold for total salaries.

If you’d like to dive into these and every other driver’s fantasy points more, head here to see the Daytona Road Course Race Sheets. 

Final Conclusions

First off, be wary of just lifting numbers from the loop data of last year’s Daytona Roval race. A lot went sideways at the end, and those numbers don’t give us a clear picture of how drivers fared throughout the entirety of that race. The averages might tell a better story than the final numbers. As per individual driver selections, the bulk of my decisions will be weighed by how drivers have done at road courses in general over the past three years, especially in regards to the Roval type races.

Second, in terms of DFS expectations, with a reduction in laps comes a reduction in scores. Therefore, outside of your main lap leader, the bulk of your roster should be drivers who have access to place differential and a top-10 finish. We’re not exactly sure just how NASCAR is going to formalize starting grids this season. However, with our only finish year to date being the Daytona 500, we could see several chalky place-differential drivers if the finish in the previous race matters more than points or fastest laps.

We’ll talk more about these two different sets of drivers later this week when NASCAR releases the official starting grid for O’Reilly Auto Parts 253.

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