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The NASCAR regular season wraps up on Saturday night, with the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway. This is already a track where chaos reigns -- add in how many drivers need a win to get a playoff spot, and things could get really weird and wild tonight.
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Game 1: More or Less Fantasy Points (2/2): Brad Keselowski (less than 13.5) and Martin Truex Jr. (less than 13.5)
Daytona is the kind of track that makes me want to just hit a bunch of "less" picks, because there's so many weird things that can happen.
For Keselowski, hammering the less is easy for me here. In 22 starts at Daytona, the veteran driver has only four top 10s, while he's collected 10 DNFs. Since winning here in 2016, his finishes are: 27th, 31st, 32nd, 36th, 12th, 39th, 36th.
Crashing in six of the last seven races here isn't good. And while I know that each crash is independent of the others and they don't necessarily prove anything, they do suggest that Keselowski isn't finding himself in spots where he can avoid the wrecks. He's not quite good enough here to be consistently in front of the crashes.
So, let's just pick the trend to continue. Keselowski under 13.5 points.
As for Truex, he also only has four career top 10s at Daytona. Since 2016, he has two second place finishes here and then also four finishes outside of the top 20.
He hasn't had quite the same bad crash luck as Keselowski, but he has wrecked in two of the last three races here and has led double-digit laps just once at the track since 2011.
Both of these drivers have a history of struggling at Daytona. The safe pick here is to pick them both to continue struggling.
If you want to bet on one having a good run, I'd go with Kes, just because more of his bad luck here seems to be luck related. He has had some decent runs at this track, but they've been derailed by crashes.
Game 2: More or Less Fantasy Points (2/2): Denny Hamlin (more than 15.5) and Kevin Harvick (less than 15.5)
While that last matchup was two drivers who've struggled here, this one is two who haven't.
Hamlin has 10 top 10s and three wins in 29 starts at this track, including wins in two of the last three races here.
Of course, in the last two summer races here, he finished outside the top 20.
Still, he's led double-digit laps here in four of his last six starts and has mostly avoided big crashes. He's also got a fourth-place finish this year at Talladega and has six wins on the season. Hamlin should be a contender for the victory tonight.
Harvick has 15 top 10s here and two wins. He finished fifth in the first race of the year at this track.
But before that, he'd finished outside of the top 10 in seven consecutive Daytona races, and he hasn't been running consistently up front here. He led 50 laps in the 2017 Daytona 500, but other than that, this eight race run here has seen him lead a combined 28 laps in the other seven races.
Harvick might manage to lead some early laps from the pole, but his recent performance here makes me wary of picking him to outperform 15.5 fantasy points.
I do think a risky bet on both drivers hitting the over could pay off, though. These are two good drivers who have had success here, even if Harvick's success is mainly in the past when he was driving for a different team. The switch to Fords has really hurt his performance at the superspeedways.
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