DraftKings & FanDuel NASCAR DFS – EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix – March 27, 2022 – FantasyCruncher.com DFS Articles & Insights – fantasycruncher.com

Core Plays

Chase Elliott – DK: $10,500 | FD: $14,000 – Starting 12th

Nascar travels to the Course of the Americas, or COTA this week for a road course race on the 3.4-mile track. As we know with road courses and long ones, we are dealing with fewer laps, 68 to be exact in this one. With fewer laps, we have fewer points for laps led and fastest laps to hand out and while these points are small in a singular sense, a driver leading half of a usual 1-mile race is almost guaranteed optimal. With fewer laps here, we are relying more on finishing position and differential to get us our point total. Fast laps and laps led will still come into play here, but the margins are way smaller. Anyway, if you aren’t new to Nascar DFS this pick won’t shock you. It is as meta as possible – Chase Elliott on a road course. In his last 12 road course races, Elliott has six wins, and 10 finishes inside the top four, nine of them are either first or second place finishes. Last year at COTA, Elliot started 8th and won while leading five laps. Elliot has led at least two laps in 11 of his last 12 races. Even the one he didn’t lead a lap in he still finished second. The price on Elliott is surprisingly not that high even though he is the highest price. I expect this to be chalk, but if you can give me a reason to not play Elliott besides the obvious ownership leverage reasons, I’ll listen. I understand this isn’t an original thought at all, but Elliott’s road course record speaks for itself

Kaz Grala – DK: $5,900 | FD: $4,500 – Starting 31st

Grala may go overlooked on this slate due to name recognition, but Grala is actually a pretty accomplished road course racer. While he is not a name we see in the Cup Series often, Grala did have a seventh-place finish at the Dayton Road Course in 2020 and turned in a decent running in the Daytona 500, returning 5.2x on his salary. At the Xfinity level, Grala’s best graded out track is Road America, in which in three races he has two top-five finishes. Grala gets the benefit of running the trucks race today, where he was turning in a solid performance until just spinning as I was typing this. Ultimately, this is a punt play. The price tag is incredibly low on a guy who could slide under the radar and should be able to grab us differential. We aren’t looking for a win, just a finish in the 15-20 range and this play is likely going to fall near the optimal lineup.

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