DFS NASCAR Scoring

The Coke Zero 400 is running today, and since I'm going to play on Draft Kings, and it's held less than an hour from my home, this race has been more in my field of vision than any other in decades.

I am certainly trying to avoid the trap of overthinking things, but I'll admit that I did look at the scoring after losing last week to try to decipher where the points are made.  Unfortunately, this means I've put a little thought into my lineup for tonight's race

[Important note: Draft Kings radically overhauled their NASCAR DFS game on August 2, 2015.  I discussed the changes in a follow up entry here.]

Basically, the give you points for 5 things, which I will list here in order of scoring potential in a DFS NASCAR event..

• Finishing Position

Top 10 by Price

The points for finishing basically give you a point for how many cars you beat with a 4 point bonus for winning the race.  When you enter any wagering event, this is what you are normally looking at: who will win.  Racers near the front at the start have a better chance of winning, while Cars in the back do not.  It made me wonder how pole position effects finishing position, and I found this interesting website from Newsday.  It seems that this year, for instance, no one who started outside of the top 20 has finished higher than 18th Place.  This explains why the most consistent NASCAR Driver this year, Kevin Harvick, dropped $2000 in cost for this race, starting in the 34 slot means the odds are not in his favor.  He's tempting at this price, but you really need to consider this statistic.  When selecting drivers, you probably need to grab  your first three or four from the top 20 positions.

• Place Differential & Pass Differential

Top 10 by Average points

These are two different ways to score, but I lumped them together because of their interconnectedness.  You get a full point for moving up the ranks and a 1/4 point for passing more cas than pass you.  This is where Harvick may make up for his poor showing in qualifying.  If he moves up from 34th to finish 15th (He's a very good driver after all), he could earn back 23.75 points.  Add this to the 30 points for finishing 15, and you have a very respectable 53.75 outing from him.

More importantly, these are crucial when selecting your one or two drivers who cost less than 10k, in order to field a handful of the top guys.  You get a guy who starts 37th like Alex Bowman at $7100, If he finishes decently, moving up 12 spots to 25th, he will get you 12 points for place differential, 3 more for pass differential, and 19 for his finish, for a very nice 31 points for minimal cost.  The final spot on your NASCAR roster is made or broken by calls such as this.  I found this website on BSSports that gives historical histograms of finishes based on starting position, which helps you visualize potential in both Place and Pass Differential.

It's also noteworthy that this creates a built in penalty for the driver with the pole position, as unless he wins the race, he is certain to have points knocked off his score. And since Pass Differential does not give credit for or penalize for positional changes caused by pit stops, it is possible to get a positive score (or negative score) much higher (or lower) than the simple math of finishing place movement.

• Laps Lead

The points continue in the pattern,
Last Place gets 1 pt

This one is pretty hard to predict, but it does seem to give certain drivers a noticeable boost to their point totals.  If a guy leads for 40 of the 160 laps the 10 points earned here are equivalent to moving up considerably in the standings. There are usually only a handful of drivers who are awarded any points fro this category. Some things that might lead one to attempt predicting this is Pole Position (as the guys in the first two to five slots have a good chance at grabbing a few points out of the gate), and Qualifying Times (the faster cars have a better chance at hitting here, but it is already reflected in the Pole Positioning).  Too the naked eye the guys with the most laps lead appear to be getting a lot of points, but most of those points come from Finishing position and Passed Drivers.

• Fastest Laps

At a half point per lap, there's only 80 points available here to all the drivers in the Coke Zero 400,  If someone does this 20 times, that's a phenomenal 10 point boost, but very few will score here more than 5-8 times..  It seems to me to be more of a tiebreaker concept than something one might directly target when selecting cars.  The Fastest Lap can occur anywhere in the standings, and I've notice lower end drivers pick up a few in the waning laps trying to get from 27th to 25th for a little more cash.  Also, the many drivers will pick up a few when they just return from the pits.  This point award is so scattered and mercurial, I don't think it really comes into play when making a lineup.  It's just a little bonus, you hope might be the difference for you with a big win, and not the difference in a loss.