 For the second consecutive week we have NASCAR Cup Series Racing during the week on a Wednesday as they're heading back to Charlotte Motor Speedway once again on Wednesday for the ALSCO Uniforms 500. It is 500 kilometers, not miles though. That's going to play a pretty key part in our strategy for this Wednesday. Also, another advantage we have for this race is we know where drivers are starting. Usually when I talk to you here at the heat check, we have no idea where they're starting. Today we do and we can use that to identify the top plays for Wednesdays. Let's dive on in and do exactly that. Welcome on into the Heat Check Fantasy Podcast powered by NumberFire. That's right here on the FanDual Podcast Network and NumberFire.com. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a Senior Writer and Analyst for NumberFire.com here to preview the ALSCO Uniforms 500 from a DFS perspective. Lock is at 8 p.m. on Wednesday night over on FanDual. Contest already posted. You can enter and as mentioned, we already have all the info we're going to have once the green flag drops. You can fill out lineups as you listen to this podcast, but again, it's wild and really fun. I kind of wish this were the case all the time. I'd love to get practice back in there, but regardless, we'll take advantage of this freedom while we have it. We're going to dive in and talk about strategies and the drivers I like in just one second. But first, a quick reminder, we've got these podcasts going down pretty regularly right now here on the DFS feed. We have two NASCAR podcasts this week, one previewing Bristol coming up later this week and also a UFC podcast. No video for that one, with myself and Austin Swain coming up on Wednesday to preview Saturday's UFC event. So two NASCAR podcasts and a UFC podcast all this week. So make sure you are subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, make sure you leave a rating and review as well. Before we dive into Wednesday's race, ever wonder what would happen if the Chicago Bears had drafted Patrick Mahomes or if Michael Vick played against Lamar Jackson. Well, now you get to find out with Fandall's football multiverse, a new contest type consisting of Madden simulations around crazy what if scenarios. Each scenario will be streamed on YouTube and have an accompanying free to play fantasy game. This week in the multiverse, Drew Brees has retired and Tayson Hill is starting quarterback for the New Orleans Saints. What will the prolific New Orleans offense look like with Hill running the show? Test your prediction skills and play a free DFS tournament for $3,000 in real prizes where Hill and the Saints are immediately put to the test against a division rival in the Atlanta Falcons. Head to Fandall.com slash nfl multiverse to enter and do not forget to subscribe to Fandall's YouTube channel and tune in at Wednesday at 8 p.m. Eastern to watch myself and JJ Zacharista call that game. So enter the DFS contest, lock at 8 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday night and then watch the stream at that same time on Wednesday. Should be a good time. The stream last week with Patrick Mahomes and Mitchell to Biscay switching teams a lot of fun doing it again on Wednesday with Tayson Hill at quarterback for the Saints. Let's dive into the track breakdown here for Wednesday's race in Charlotte. And if you listened to last week's podcast previewing the Coca Cola 600, this is going to be a totally different strategy thing that we had for that race. Instead of it being 600 miles, it's 312 because again, it's 500 kilometers, not miles. That leaves us with just 208 laps to be run in the race, which means that there are 20.8 Fandall points available for laps led. Entering Sunday, we wanted to put a major emphasis on laps led and running out front. Here we want to do it totally different. We want to get heavy exposure to drivers starting in the back because with fewer laps to be run, there is less upside for drivers starting up front. If you look at last Wednesday's race at Darlington, which was the same thing, the same qualifying procedure, it's a great example of how this plays out in practice in that race on Wednesday. No driver in the perfect lineup started higher than 16th. There were three drivers started outside the top 25. There were two who started outside the top 30. So stacking the back there was really effective. It was basically a restrictor play race or a pack racing race where you wanted to stack the back. And we're going to be having similar selections starting deeper in the pack once again this week. Qualifying order as mentioned, the exact same as that race. The top 20 finishers from Sunday's race were inverted. So William Byron started, or finished 20th. He will start on the pole alongside Alex Bowman. Brad Keselowski won. He will now start 20th. So that means the top finishing drivers from Sunday's race will all be starting in the middle of the pack on Wednesday. Those drivers are going to be elite options for this race because they have kind of everything that we want. They will have place differential upside, but they'll also have the speed to finish well. A lot of the cars starting in the front aren't going to have the same speed as those drivers in the middle of the pack, which means they should be able to work their way forward. Track position mattered a lot on Sunday, but it matters less when your car is much better than those in front of you. And that will be the case for a lot of drivers on Wednesday. I also think it's important if you watched Sunday's race, you're going to have the mindset of track position matters a huge amount. And I think it's important to say we shouldn't overvalue track position when it comes to drivers coming from the back. Brad Keselowski, as a reminder, got penalized before Sunday's race, he had to start in the back. He won that race, despite having to do that. It is a shorter race, so there is not a ton of time for a driver to work their way forward, but there will also be shorter stages. The first stages is 55 laps, which is basically one fuel run. They will then have a caution and they will reset. Second stage is 60 laps, pretty similar to the first. And the final stage is 93 laps. If you watch Sunday's race, each stage all four were 100 laps long. So these will be shorter sprints rather than super long green flag runs. That helps drivers make up positions more quickly. So skewing toward the back is the right way to play things in general, both for cash games and in your core for tournaments. And that is true for both studs and for value plays. I do still like some of the drivers starting up front, and will go through them in the tier by tier breakdown. The reason we can go through and still like those drivers despite that is that finishing points matter a lot. And as we saw on Sunday, drivers can dominate and run out front for a long stretch of time. So I think that the way to view this is similar to what we've done at pack racing tracks in the past, as I alluded to earlier. I will have an assumed winner in my tournament lineups and that driver can start anywhere. If they start second, probably going to start second, a little foreshadowing there, they can start second and it does not matter because if they lead a lot of laps and win the race, they're going to pay off regardless of where they start. So I lock in the driver, I assume will win. And then I go with place differential drivers from there on out. With the length of the race and the way the lineup is assembled, that's how we can build the highest upside lineups that also have a good floor. So assume winner then stack the back very similar to Daytona and Talladega. That's the way we want to play things for on Wednesday. There aren't a ton of good value plays who really pop and are starting in the back. There are a couple of them and we will discuss them during the podcast, but you'll likely have to get a little bit uncomfortable at times and target cheaper drivers starting closer to the front. And that's where you want to just target raw speed and be a little bit more de-gaffy with starting position. If you're going to roster drivers starting up front, we care more about where they're going to finish than where they're starting. There's not a huge difference between drivers starting eighth and fourteenth. It's about three points of place differential gap if they were to finish in the same spot. So it does still matter, but if there's going to be a gap in their finishing positions, you should still go with the faster driver between those two. The best day to lead on there is their average running position in the opening race on Sunday. And thankfully there are good drivers who are cheap for Sundays or for Wednesday's race. There are six drivers with a salary lower than $8,500 who had a top 17 average running position in the first race. There are also a couple of others who had better cars than their average running position would indicate. And we'll discuss later on, they're still going to be in play. So overall, we're going to have options in the value tier. Some of them will be starting lower in the pack. Some will be starting higher, but can still be in play because they were good enough during Sunday's race. So for value plays, go for place differential first, but outside of that, just use the drivers you think will finish the best. So let's recap things here quickly from a strategy perspective for Sunday. You do in general want to stack the back for cash games, load up on drivers who are starting poorly, lock them in and go from there. And for tournaments, your core should be drivers starting further back. For tournaments, you should assume a winner. And that winner could be a driver starting in the back. Like you could assume that Denny Hamlin is going to win, even though he's starting 29. You could do that. So that would be a very back heavy lineup, but you can also use Alex Bowman, William Byron, Joey Logano, guys starting up front, if you think they have the upside to win the race, lock them in and then stack the back from there. We do want to put a lot of stock in the first race where drivers ran who was fast, not just based on where they finished, but their average running position and also watching them because some drivers may have had issues early that tainted where they finished. Finally, look for place differential in your value place. We want to build around that, but if you can't find a guy starting further back who you like, then shoot for the best finisher who you expect to be the best finisher among the driver starting closer to the front. So that is our strategy for this weekend or for Wednesday's race. Stack the back, use drivers up front if you think they're going to finish well, but in general, we want to build around drivers starting further back. Let's move into the tier by tier breakdown here on FanDuel for Wednesday's race, starting with Martin Truex Jr. in the elite tier at $14,000 through Denny Hamlin at $12,000. This tier is six drivers and five of those six drivers are starting further back and they are candidates for place differential, cash game options, and I think they're all good players, but I want to focus here briefly on the one guy who is not in that tier and that's Alex Bowman. Bowman is starting this race in second, which means that he finished 19, and that ain't great. You don't want a 19th place finisher on your roster, but it also illustrates how bad finishing position is as an indicator of how fast a driver is. Alex Bowman in that race led 164 laps. He had the second to best average running position of the entire race. He was fourth, Martin Truex Jr. was third. Bowman was running in the top five pretty much the entire night. He restarted there for the green white checkered finish as well, but he slipped up in turn two and fell back to the tail end of the lead lap. That finish does not represent the speed that Alex Bowman had in his car, but it now allows him to start on the front row. Of the 14 drivers starting in the top 14 spots, Bowman clearly has the best speed in this race. There is value in finding a winner, and I think that there's value in trying to find laps led despite this race being a little bit shorter. Because of that, I am still very willing to use Alex Bowman in my lineups, even though he doesn't fit the default build of stacking the back. Bowman ranks first in my model entry in this race. He was second entry in Sunday's race, and when I pick an assumed winner in my lineup, it is going to be Alex Bowman more often than it is anybody else. He is going to be a semi-core play for me in tournaments just because I think his odds of winning are pretty high. The other, I guess, more obvious and more process fitting play in this range is Denny Hamlin. Hamlin had an issue before the race even started on Sunday, and he's going to start in the back. He had to ride around the entire night. We never had to see his speed, but he did have the fastest lap 29 times during the race. That is tainted because he could pit when he wanted to. He was in clean air, so I wouldn't put a ton of stock in that, but it also means his car is at least competitive, and that's valuable. Hamlin will start 29th. He could be one of the first drivers we lock in for cash games for me personally. He would beat that first driver. I think that plays differential upside, but also a really good floor blends to make Denny Hamlin an elite cash game play. As far as the other drivers, there are four drivers starting in the middle of the pack in this tier. Let's rank them. I'm going to put Martin Truex Jr. first. He was too fast on Sunday for me to not do that. Chase Elliott will be second. He would have won the race if not for their weird call to pit. Still finished second technically, but weird strategy there. He's also at a top nine average running position in every race outside of Daytona this year. Kyle Busch will be third, ahead of Kevin Harvick for me. I just have more faith in Kyle Busch making his way through the pack. Harvick has had some troubles passing on this track type dating back to last year. Since I went to this new package, passing in this package has been tough for him. So I'm going to put Harvick fourth in this tier. So I think among this tier, Bowman is my top-assumed winner. Hamlin is the best cash gameplay, and he's a tournament lock as well. And then ranking the others, it's Truex, Chase Elliott, Kyle Busch, and Kevin Harvick in this tier. Let's move now to the second tier, Brad Kezalowski at 11-6 through Ryan Blaney at $10,400. I mentioned that Denny Hamlin is one of the first drivers you will want to lock into cash game rosters. The other consideration there, and I think the bigger lock potentially, is Jimmy Johnson at $11,200. Johnson got disqualified after post-race inspection on Sunday, and for him, that's obviously going to be less than ideal because he lost all the points he got from Sunday's race, and he got quite a few of them. But it also makes him an absolute ideal play for DFS on Wednesday. He checks literally every box. The finishing position for Johnson was changed to 40th because of the disqualification, which means he will start dead last on Wednesday. With the other drivers starting the back, we have to wonder about what their speed would have been on Sunday, because we didn't get to see it in full form. With Johnson, we did. He finished 2nd and had a 7th place average running position. We know how fast he was. We know that, and that's really valuable information to have. We know how fast he is. He is starting shotgun on the field, and it's a race where we want to prioritize drivers starting further back. So Johnson, to me, he is a lock for cash games. He is a lock for tournaments. Someone on whom we want to be overweight relative to the field, he's going to be a great play for Sunday's race, or for Wednesday's race, arguably the best in the entire field for this one. Johnson's teammate, William Byron, is also in this tier, and he is starting the poll. And to me, he's kind of like an Alex Bowman light, a lighter version of Alex Bowman. Byron has the speed to hang with Bowman. They were jockeying back and forth for position at times on Sunday. Byron, just like Johnson, had a 7th place average running position, so I am more than comfortable having Linus or Byron as my assumed winner, just like I am with Bowman. I will just do it less often than I do with Bowman. The same discussion applies to Joey Logano at 11-3. He is starting 8th, but had an 8th place average running position on Sunday, so if I'm ranking the assumed winners for this race, it's Alex Bowman 1, William Byron 2 because they are starting on the front row, and then Logano would be 3. All of them are mighty fine options, but I think it's Bowman Tier 1, Gap, Byron Tier 2, Gap again, Logano Tier 3 by himself. Brad Kezalowski and Ryan Blaney in this tier, they are starting in the middle of the pack due to good runs on Sunday. Obviously, Kezalowski won. Blaney seemed like he was going to have a shot to win if he ever got to the front. It just never really happened. He had gotten up to I think 2nd or 3rd and then had an issue in his pits. Didn't get back up there, but did finish 3rd. Kezalowski got the win despite starting the back. Between these two guys, I would rank Blaney higher because he's cheaper between them, but both are in play for sure. I think that Blaney is a really good play, again, as he is every week for me at $10,400. In this tier, Johnson ranks first, both for cash games and for tournaments. Byron and Logano are good for tournaments. Blaney and Kezalowski, options for cash probably won't fit that because Hamlin and Johnson are better plays for cash games, but they're also very good for tournaments. I'm in on both those guys for sure. The middle range on Fandall is Kurt Bush at $10,000 through Tyler Radick at $8,000. There's a pretty logical group of drivers in play for cash games in this race, which is both good and bad. There's an ideal build. To me though, when we have an ideal cash game build, my hope is that I want to play things straight and hope my opponent screws up. One of the errors they could make would be not using Clint Boyer. Boyer is starting 39th after he crashed early on Sunday. He crashed hard, but he crashed early. Boyer was really good in Darlington. He had a top 10 average running position in both those races. We also know that Stuart Haas racing cars, well, the speed on this track type, didn't necessarily show it on Sunday because they got mired in traffic. But with Boyer starting 39th, he's got a lot of leeway to not finish well and still pay off for DFS. The other plus of Boyer is that he is a lot cheaper than Hamlin and Johnson at just $9,000. So again, I'm trying not to overthink it. Boyer has both an elite floor and an elite ceiling. So I want to use him liberally in all formats. He is an awesome play for cash games again. So I think the cash game build is pretty clear. Hamlin, Johnson, Boyer, all ideal. I would say if you use all three, use all three. Hope your opponents screw up, which is something that they will do more often than you would expect in DFS. Everybody else from this tier outside of Boyer is starting within the top 13 position, which means they finished well on Sunday, but it also means they come with risk in tournaments. None of these guys are desirable, I would say, or necessary cash gameplay. So let's rank them exclusively for tournaments. I'm going to put Erik Jones first in that discussion. Jones was running up in the top five at times on Sunday, so we know that he has a speed to win and he's starting tenths. Erik Jones is one for me. Then it's Erik Almarola. Almarola also has great equipment, just like Erik Jones. He just couldn't show it on Sunday because he had to start all the way in the back. He wrecked and qualifying, started 40th, eventually worked his way forward, but it took a while. Almarola is still sixth in my model, and that is where he's starting. He will be one of the faster cars at the front of the pack on Wednesday, and if you told me now that that Erik Almarola finished top three in stage one, it wouldn't shock me at all because I think he has that kind of upside given where he's starting. I'm going to go Tyler Redick next. He's starting 13th. He had a top 10 average running position on Sunday that Matti Benedetto will be last in this tier, so for tournaments the ranking is Jones, Almarola, Redick, then Benedetto, but Boyer is the only cash game play within this range on Vanduul. Moving to the value tier that is Matt Kenseth at $7,600 through Ricky Senes Jr. at $6,300, and this range contains the two big value cash game considerations for this race in Matt Kenseth at $7,600 and Ryan Newman at $7,000. These two drivers are starting right by each other in 26th and 27th respectively, which means things didn't go too hot for them on Sunday, but it's not necessarily stuff that scares me for Wednesday. Kenseth had an issue, slapped the wall, and he finished poorly because of that, but that's after he started the race in fourth position, so we know with Kenseth that there is speed under the hood. Newman doesn't have equipment that is as good as Kenseth's, but he was running up in the top 10 at times on Sunday. He just had issues. I believe he had a green flag pit stop in the second half of the race and slid down. So what we have here are two drivers you could reasonably project for a top 15 finish who have upside to finish within the top 10, but they're starting outside the top 25. So both these guys are cash game considerations for me. I would rank Kenseth higher between the two because I like his equipment more, but both these drivers are core plays for tournaments, and they're viable for cash games as well. They are the two best values on the slate by a pretty significant margin. The others down here outside of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. are all starting near the front and thus not in play for cash games. Stenhouse is not in play for cash either, but that is for far different reasons, which we will not discuss. He's going to wreck a lot. That's just that's why. Among those starting at the front, my favorite driver is Austin Dylan at $7,200. He actually had a ninth place average running position on Sunday, which is better than Tyler Redick, who is starting a little bit deeper in the pack and has gotten more buzz, but Dylan had a better average running position, ran him from the entire race, so he could finish there again on Sunday. I do not like Dylan as much as I like the tournament plays in the tier above, the guys like Eric Jones, Eric Almerola, Tyler Redick even in that same tier, nor do I like Dylan as much as I like Kenza the Newman, but he could do it if you need to differentiate within this tier. So Dylan kind of in play for tournaments, not trying to get there, but if I wind up there, hey, whatever, I guess it happens. The punting tier on Fanduul is Christopher Bell at $6,000 on down and Bell ran well on Sunday. He's starting 12th. He had a 15th place average running position in that race. So his equipment exceeded my expectations. I am still wary because of the starting spot. He's starting higher than I would like, but it's not as far off as I expected things to be. As far as others down here, there are a couple of options. The three I'm willing to consider are Ryan Priest, Ty Dylan, and Bubba Wallace. Priest is starting 22nd. He had a 23rd place average running position on Sunday, but the equipment's not terrible. I could see him getting a top 15 finish on Wednesday. Wouldn't shock me all that much. Dylan starting 25th. Didn't really do anything on Sunday, but he did have a 20th place average running position in Las Vegas this year. So that's worth something. Of those three, though, my favorite is Bubba Wallace. He is starting 38th. The reason he finished poorly is because his brakes gave out, and that's because his equipment sucks. Bubba's equipment is holding him back, and I think that's pretty definitive by this point. So there's always risk here because that's not the first time he's had a brake failure. It led to a really awful crash and poke into it a couple of years ago. So this team is not good, but Bubba can do some things himself. He had good runs in Darlington. He also had a top 10 finish in Las Vegas earlier this year, and Bubba gives you more flexibility from a finishing perspective than the other two because he's starting 38th. You do not need a great finish for Bubba Wallace to pay off. So Bubba is my favorite play here. He can help you jam in some of the studs. So Bubba is my number one guy down here, but priests and Dylan are also in consideration. That wraps up our tier by tier breakdown. So let's close up shop today with our picks to win for Wednesday's race. If you listened to the Coca Cola 600 podcast, you know my picks to win, where Alex Bowman and Eric Gamarola won above $10,000, won below it, and it didn't go so hot. Both those guys finished outside the top 15. Not great, but we're going to double down and go with both those guys once again for today. Alex Bowman might pick to win above $10,000. Eric Gamarola below it. I just think that they're starting well. They have a lot of speed in their cars. I think that is it's hard to lay off. If you made me pick other drivers just to differentiate, I'd go William Byron on the guy above $10,000. Eric Jones below it. But my true picks are Alex Bowman, Eric Gamarola, doubling down on what we said for Sunday's race. But overall, I'm just excited to see what this race is like on Wednesday. Sunday's race long stretches where things were pretty static, but now shorter stages, a shorter race, things a bit more hectic, fast drivers coming from the back. I think we could see a fun one on Sunday or on Wednesday. Keep messing up with that. I'm excited to see how things play out. But again, that is not the final heat check podcast for this week. USC coming up tomorrow with Austin Swame. We have the Bristol podcast coming up later this week. Once contests are posted as well. So make sure you are subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcast, Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, you name it, you can find us. And if you like what you hear or if it works out well for you at DFS, please leave a rating and review as well. And thank you to those of you who have done so already. If you have any questions for me, I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the FanDuel Podcast Network at FanDuel Podcast. Big thank you to Calvin Theobald, our video producer for running the video side of things here today and chopping up clips for the FanDuel Twitter account. Thank you, Cal, as always. And thank you to everyone for tuning in for today. Hopefully Sunday went well for you. And hopefully Wednesday goes even better. We can run it back again at Bristol on Sunday. This has been the heat check fantasy podcast powered by Number Fire.