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The NASCAR Cup Series heads to Las Vegas on Sunday to begin the Round of 8. Chase Elliott, Joey Logano, Ross Chastain, Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, William Byron, Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe are still alive in the race for a title. Of those, only Elliott and Logano have won titles before.
Earlier this year, Alex Bowman won at Vegas, but he'll miss this race as he recovers from concussion symptoms. Among the playoff drivers, Hamlin and Logano have won here in Cup, while Briscoe and Chastain have won in Xfinity.
Below are my NASCAR DFS lineup picks for DraftKings and FanDuel this week. This slate locks on 10/16/22 at 2:50 p.m. ET. If you have any questions or want to talk about NASCAR, you can find me on Twitter at @juscarts.
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DFS Lineup Picks - DraftKings, FanDuel
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Denny Hamlin
Starts 31st - DraftKings $11,100 | FanDuel $14,000
The qualifying results for this race are...interesting. We have a front row of Tyler Reddick and Austin Cindric, plus Harrison Burton and Austin Dillon start in the top 10, and then we have Chase Elliott starting 20th and Denny Hamlin starting 31st.
Elliott and Hamlin should both be in some of your lineups, but I'm highlighting Hamlin here because he has an extra 11 spots of place differential upside, which could come into play.
Hamlin is a former winner here, winning this race last season in dominant fashion, as he led 137 laps. And he could have won back-to-back here after leading 31 laps in this year's spring race, but a drivetrain issue ended his day early. That broke a streak of three top fives in a row here.
In fact, Hamlin has led double-digit laps in four consecutive Vegas starts, and triple-digit laps in two of those. This was a relatively bad track for Hamlin for years. He didn't lead a single lap in his first seven starts. He had a few stretches where he'd get one top 10 every five or so races here. But this 11 team has turned that luck around lately.
Ross Chastain
Starts 11th - DraftKings $9,900| FanDuel $11,500
Chastain is in the Round of 8! Who would have thought that'd be true before this season when he'd never won a Cup race, or even during this season when he was making enemies of everyone.
But he's here. And with his biggest "enemy" Denny Hamlin also still being alive in the playoff race, I think we can probably mark Chastain as safe from pay back for at least the next couple of races.
Chastain has a win here in Xfinity and he almost won here in the spring, as he led 83 laps and finished third. It was his first Cup Series top 10 at this track, but it's hard to really hold his past against him, considering the level of equipment he's driven in the past. Focus on the present, which is that Ross Chastain is fast here. There's also a tiny bit of place differential upside—GPPs can be won or lost by those few points there.
Martin Truex Jr.
Starts 27th - DraftKings $9,100 | FanDuel $10,000
Truex is having his worst season in a long time. His average finish is 15.3, which is his lowest mark since 2014, his first season with Furniture Row. And his last four finishes this season are 36th, 31st, 26th, and 17th. Things aren't going very well!
Despite that, I'm all in on Truex on Sunday, because there's just so much place differential upside when you've got a Joe Gibbs car starting 27th. And we're at Las Vegas, where Truex has historically done really well.
Truex is a two-time winner here and has finished in the top 10 in 57.1% of his Vegas starts—and that's factoring in his starts for DEI, when he was 0-for-5 at getting top 10s.
Since joining JGR in 2019, Truex has made seven starts here, with one finish outside the top 10. He was eighth here earlier this season.
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Joey Logano
Starts 5th - DraftKings $8,900 | FanDuel $9,200
I think there's some really intriguing upside with Logano. I mentioned in the Hamlin section that there's a pretty weird starting lineup here. Even the two playoff drivers starting ahead of Logano—William Byron and Ryan Blaney—aren't world-beaters. There's an opening for Logano to get out front early and contend for this win.
Considering he's a two-time winner here, that wouldn't be too much of a shock. Logano has hit a down stretch at Vegas over the last four races here, but before that, he had nine top 10s in a row at this track, including two wins. He had a five-race streak of leading at least 25 laps. The point is, Logano knows how to win here. If you think he has a shot to do so again on Sunday, then there's some good value here.
Justin Haley
Starts 28th - DraftKings $5,800 | FanDuel $4,000
If you wondered why I loaded this article up with high-priced plays, it's because there are two value guys who I really, really like this week.
Let's start with Justin Haley, who has quietly been extremely good over the last month or so. Haley has four top 15s in a row, and six top 20s in a row. Those have come on a wide variety of tracks: Darlington, Kansas, Bristol, Texas, Talladega and the Roval. His third at Texas might be a little misleading since it came in a weird race that saw 27.2% of the race run under caution and an average green flag run of 14.3 laps, but it was still a third place finish at an intermediate track.
Haley rolls off 28th. He has some really good place differential upside based on his recent race results.
Todd Gilliland
Starts 35th - DraftKings $5,200 | FanDuel $3,500
Gilliland isn't as clearly strong a play as Haley, but I still think there's a lot of upside with this 38 car, as Gilliland will roll off from the 35th position on Sunday.
It's hard to get a sense of where this team is at because Gilliland's finishes have been all over the place. But he has an average finish of 23.0 this season, which is a little ahead of his average start of 27.3. And that's something I like to see with a value guy: that he can consistently run ahead of where he starts.
Gilliland was 23rd here earlier this season, finishing on the lead lap. That was only his third Cup Series start ever. More recently, he was 23rd at Kansas, a track with some similarities to this one.
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