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A busy weekend in Indianapolis concludes on Sunday with the Verizon 200 at the Brickyard. This is the third race of the weekend on the Indy road course after IndyCar and Xfinity ran here on Saturday. Trucks and ARCA were across town at IRP.
After last week's dramatic DQ of race winner Denny Hamlin, what will we see at Indy? Will we get another new winner, our 15th of the season? Will we get a vintage Chase Elliott domination? Will something else happen?
Below are my NASCAR DFS lineup picks for DraftKings and FanDuel this week. This slate locks on 7/31/22 at 3:01 p.m. ET. If you have any questions or want to talk NASCAR, you can find me on Twitter at @juscarts.
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Ross Chastain
Starts 21st - DraftKings $10,400 | FanDuel $11,500
Playing Ross Chastain at this point has to come with a disclaimer: yes, he could win any race he enters, but that's only if one of his many rivals doesn't wreck him.
But when Chastain is starting 21st at a road course, that place differential upside outweighs the concerns that Denny Hamlin is going to spin him out.
So far this season on road courses, Chastain has a win at COTA in which he led 31 of 69 laps, then a seventh at Sonoma and a fourth at Road America. He's been consistently up front at these kinds of tracks.
And then on Saturday, Chastain got some extra track time by running the Xfinity race. Despite being in the 92 car—not the same caliber of equipment as the other Cup racers in the field—Chastain managed to come home fourth.
Kyle Larson
Starts 22nd - DraftKings $10,200| FanDuel $10,000
There are some really good drivers starting just outside the top 20 today. This is definitely the area that I'm targeting for place differential.
Larson's interesting. In his career, he has three Cup Series wins at road courses and 10 top 10s. But this season, he was 29th at COTA and 15th at Sonoma before finishing third at Road America.
But Larson didn't forget how to drive on road courses. He just hasn't had the best of luck. When you have a chance to get one of the best road racers in NASCAR starting outside the top 20, you've got to jump on it. Larson might not be having the dominant season he had last year, but he's always a threat to win.
Austin Cindric
Starts 2nd - DraftKings $9,100 | FanDuel $8,500
Before he started figuring out how to win on ovals in Xfinity, a lot of people thought of Cindric as solely a road course guy. His first two Xfinity wins came on road courses, and overall 38.4% of his Xfinity Series victories were on road courses.
That includes the Xfinity race here last year, when Cindric led 29 of the 62 laps on his way to the victory. He also ran the Cup race here last year, when he got the first top 10 of his Cup Series career with a ninth-place finish.
Cindric was one of two drivers with an average speed over 99 miles per hour in qualifying. A lot of people are going to target Tyler Reddick, the polesitter, for their laps led/fastest lap points, but I think Cindric offers similar upside at a much cheaper price.
No, he hasn't been as consistent as some of the other drivers starting up front. But Cindric is a road course guy through and through. Inconsistency on an oval won't make me fade him on a road course when he's finished in the top 10 in the first three road course races this season.
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A.J. Allmendinger
Starts 20th - DraftKings $8,200 | FanDuel $8,800
Allmendinger won Saturday's Xfinity Series race. He also this race last year, despite Kaulig being a part-time effort then.
Now, Kaulig is full-time, though the 16 car still has a rotating group of drivers. Allmendinger has made 10 starts this season in the car and he's struggled some, with an average finish of 21.0.
But that's also not the whole story. Let's look just at road courses this year. At COTA, he finished 33rd, but he did lead two laps. At Sonoma, he wasn't much of a factor, finishing 19th. And at Road America, he put things together and finished ninth.
Allmendinger is likely the best road course racer in this field. The car isn't as good as it was last year when he won this race, but a top 10 is pretty easily in play.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr,
Starts 38th - DraftKings $6,100 | FanDuel $6,000
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is not a great road course racer. He's literally never had a top 10 on a road course in the Cup Series, and his average finish at road courses is 23.2.
But we can kind of throw that out the window since he starts 38th.
There are simply too many bad cars in this field for Stenhouse to not make some massive movement up the field. Maybe Stenhouse is only a 25th-place car, but with this much place differential upside, I'll take him for the high floor alone and will hope things break his way and he winds up in the top 20 by the end of the race.
Joey Hand
Starts 27th - DraftKings $5,700 | FanDuel $5,000
In his last two Cup Series starts, Hand outqualified his equipment, which made me fade him. But with Hand starting 27th on Sunday, he's in play as a deep sleeper option.
Hand is a long-time veteran road racer who can take a bad car and get at least something out of it. Maybe that something is only a 20th-place run, but at this price, there'd be worse than getting 30 fantasy points from a driver at this price, right?
There's always a chance this equipment breaks or something goes wrong on a pit stop or something of that nature, but go ahead and take that risk.
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