RADIO
A rain delay on Sunday means that the Geico 500 at Talladega Superspeedway has been pushed back to Monday.
It also means that DraftKings has put up some new contests for the new attempt at running the race. And because we have data on what drivers were at what ownership percentage from Sunday's lineups, we can identify some underowned and overowned drivers who you might want to be aware of if you're trying to build a unique lineup.
Based on data from CBS's Mike McClure, here's a look at some interesting ownership percentages among drivers from Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega and what that means about drivers who might be sleepers and overvalued for the New Start slates.
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Ownership Rates From The $1.25M Big One
Potential Overvalued Drivers
Brendan Gaughan - 44% Drafted
Everyone seems to have identified the same sleeper pick for this race with Beard Motorsports's Brendan Gaughan.
I get that. He starts 39th and has a pretty good track record at these kinds of tracks, including a seventh-place finish at Daytona this year. But at the same time, 44 percent of people in the big contest on DraftKings played Gaughan. If you're setting a lineup for the New Start contests today, do you really want to invest in someone who's in that many rosters when you factor in that we're at such an unpredictable racetrack? It's also worth remembering that in all of Gaughan's part-time seasons, he's never recorded more than one top 10 finish, and he crashed out in half of his four plate races last year.
Ty Dillon - 34% Drafted
Another driver who a lot of people seem to love is Ty Dillon. It makes sense, as he starts 33rd and is significantly cheaper than another driver who starts that far back like Christopher Bell.
RCR and their related teams like Dillon's Germain Racing 13 car have fine equipment for a track like Talladega, but with how unpredictable and chaotic the middle of the pack seems to always be here, I'm a little wary of Dillon, and he's in a lot of lineups already. If this is a race where uniqueness is maybe even more important than usual in lineup building, I'm fine pivoting off of Dillon.
Christopher Bell - 38% Drafted
I get that he has tremendous place differential upside, but Bell is also the fifth-most expensive driver on this entire slate. He ran solid here in Xfinity and hasn't crashed out of an Xfinity or Truck Series race at the track, but a 38-percent ownership rate just feels like too much for Bell when you factor in how high his DFS pricing is. There are cheaper drivers who might not have the same upside from a place differential perspective but who have experience here, and I'd rather move on to one of them than roster someone who nearly four-tenths of people are drafting.
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Potential Sleepers
Jimmie Johnson - 7% Drafted
Yes, Johnson starts fourth in this race, which introduces a lot of place differential downside for him should he get caught in a wreck. And yes, last year was a mess for him here. But the Hendrick cars have speed this season and Johnson's won a pair of races in the past at Talladega, plus has three wins at Daytona. While the downside is obvious here, if I'm putting together multiple lineups, I might throw him in one or two just to be different, especially since he's shown he can win here.
John Hunter Nemechek - 5% Drafted
Starting 22nd doesn't give Nemechek the same place differential upside of other drivers, but at $5,500, Nemechek can fit into most lineup builds and has an advantage over the drivers priced lower than him: in a potentially clean or mostly clean race in which the ability to keep up with the main pack matters, Nemechek's got better equipment under him than any cheaper driver does.
He also had an 11th-place finish in the Daytona 500, plus had tops 10s in both his Xfinity Talladega starts. His Truck results aren't quite as good, but Nemechek's shown he can wheel a car around a superspeedway.
Gray Gaulding - 4% Drafted
The winning DFS lineup at Talladega is going to leave money on the table. That's just how racing here goes. And what better way to leave money on the table than by throwing the cheapest driver in the field into a lineup!
Under normal circumstances, my feelings about rostering Gray Gaulding would lie somewhere between "no" and "once again, no." But superspeedways are the great equalizer, and Gaulding may be starting higher than I'm comfortable with in 29th, but at this point you're only playing someone this low because you're hoping they survive the wreckage lottery and end up with a top 15 finish.
And hey, it could happen! Rick Ware Racing isn't a good team, but Gaulding is a solid NASCAR driver. Ride around in the back all day, avoid the Big One, and leave Talladega with a solid but unspectacular finish. Rostering him is a risk, but everything at Talladega is a risk, isn't it?
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