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The NASCAR Cup Series is in Talladega on Sunday for the second race of the Round of 12. Superspeedway races are always significantly different than other races because pack racing makes for a lot of movement and a lot of big crashes.
Place differential is more important than ever. You're going to want to mostly pick drivers that start outside the top 20, at least when finding value. You can afford to play a couple of top drivers if they start up front, but don't have too many drivers with good starting spots because you'll almost certainly lose place differential points because of it.
Below are my NASCAR DFS lineup picks for the YellaWood 500 on DraftKings and FanDuel this week. This slate locks on 10/6/2024 at 2:31 p.m. EDT. If you have any questions or want to talk about NASCAR, you can find me on X at @juscarts.
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DFS Lineup Picks - DraftKings, FanDuel
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Chase Elliott
Starts 11th - DK: $9.5K, FD: $11.5K
Normally, you'd like drivers to start a little deeper in the field at a track like Talladega because of the chaos factor, but I actually love Chase Elliott even though he starts 11th.
Chase Elliott was in the mix for the win at Talladega until a tri-oval wreck left him with 4 flat tires and an 8th-place finish.
📹 @WyattGametime pic.twitter.com/idRPQM77uq
— Frontstretch (@Frontstretch) October 1, 2023
That's because Elliott has been very, very good at this track since coming to the Cup Series. In 17 starts here, Elliott has two wins and eight top 10s with an average finish of 13.7. Considering the unpredictable nature of this track, that's a strong average finish.
Entering this race, Elliott has led laps in four consecutive starts at the 2.66-mile track, posting a top-15 finish in each of those races.
William Byron
Starts 16th - DK: $9.4K, FD: $12.5K
William Byron already has one superspeedway win this season as he scored the victory in the Daytona 500 to open the year. He'll look to make it two at Talladega.
Byron has run well here during his Cup career. Over the last nine races here, Byron has just one finish worse than 15th, as he crashed out of the fall 2021 event. He was second in this race last season and led 12 laps.
Bubba Wallace
Starts 26th - DK: $8.5K, FD: $10.5K
Now on to some deeper place differential plays. Bubba Wallace starts this race from 26th and definitely has some upside, though his track record here is...weird.
See, Wallace earned one of his two career Cup Series victories here, but that was his only finish here better than 14th. But he's also led double-digit laps in four of his races here, which doesn't even include the win.
Honestly, I don't know what to think about the No. 23 car. Wallace always shows speed at superspeedways, but the finishes don't usually match up with how he performed. At a track like this, my process is to usually value how someone runs over where they usually finish.
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Ross Chastain
Starts 27th - DK: $8.3K, FD: $7.8K
Back in 2022, Ross Chastain earned his second career Cup Series victory in the spring Talladega race, starting 19th and leading just one single lap on his way to the win. He then came back in the fall, led 36 laps, and finished fourth.
Those two races are Chastain's only top 10s at this track in the Cup Series, so you might think that he just happened to have one year where he figured things out at the track. Chastain has led laps in all but one of his races here since joining Trackhouse, and he led six laps in the spring race while finishing 13th. He has a ton of place differential upside this weekend.
Chase Briscoe
Starts 36th - DK: $7.3K, FD: $6.0K
There's some major place differential upside for Chase Briscoe and this No. 14 car as he'll start way back in 36th.
Playoff drivers that missed the final round of qualifying at Talladega:
Chase Elliott (11th)
Kyle Larson (12th)
Tyler Reddick (14th)
William Byron (16th)
Christopher Bell (21st)
Alex Bowman (23rd)
Daniel Suarez (31st)
Chase Briscoe (36th)— Dustin Albino (@DustinAlbino) October 5, 2024
Briscoe already enters this race below the cut line to advance to the Round of 8. The fact that he starts this far back means that Briscoe is going to have some desperation in him. On one hand, that could mean Briscoe will be gunning for the front of the field, helping him gain place differential points. On the other hand, aggressiveness at a superspeedway can easily end with your car in the fence.
That's the beauty of this place: either option feels equally likely, so you want to have some exposure to Briscoe in your DFS lineups for the event that we get the former result.
Justin Haley
Starts 35th - DK: $6.8K, FD: $5.5K
Justin Haley's first race since rejoining Spire ended with a 33rd-place finish at Kansas last weekend, but he showed speed at times during the race, with an average running position of 22nd.
Haley has a pair of wins at Talladega in the Xfinity Series. In fact, all four of his victories in NASCAR's second-tier series have come at superspeedways, and his lone Cup win was in 2019 in a rain-shortened Daytona race.
While he hasn't found Cup Series success at Talladega, Haley was sixth in this race last year and led four laps when the series was here earlier this season.
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