 Hey everybody, what's going on? I am Greg Sosman, joined today by Jim Sonis of Fandle, who's here to talk about the next race at Darlington as the Cup Series continues. What's up, Jim? I can be nothing but great right now, Greg. It's so exciting to have actual sports and cars back on the track for real. Another race coming up on Wednesday. The Xfinity Series is running Tuesday. So I'm kind of, you know, at least relatively on cloud nine, so things are pretty good here. How are you doing? I'm doing all right, man. Having sports back, no matter what the sport is, makes me feel good. I'm excited. NASCAR, a lot of people have fun with that over the weekend and I'll continue, of course, on Wednesday for the next race at Darlington. So let's begin with your favorite DFS play here on Wednesday and well, it makes sense. You like recency bias and the person that most recently won at Darlington was Kevin Harvick. So he's your favorite driver on Wednesday. Yeah, it definitely feels point-chasey to go with Kevin Harvick, but there is also a direct advantage to having him won that race on Sunday from a DFS perspective. That advantage that he's gonna start 20th on Wednesday. What the Cup Series is doing for qualifying is they were inverting the top 20 drivers. So Harvick won, he starts 20th, the driver who finished 20th will start first. That's huge because for this race on Wednesday, we wanna find drivers starting further back. The Wednesday race is shorter being 500 kilometers. And when a race is shorter, we are incentivized to find drivers starting further back who can get us upside via place differential. And you're not gonna find many better options than Kevin Harvick there. Coming off that win, they have confirmed they're gonna use that exact same car that they used on Sunday. So we wanna use drivers starting further back. Kevin Harvick is starting 20th in the exact same car he used to win on Sunday. I think that that makes it really enticing and really hard to go anywhere else. Then Kevin Harvick at the top end, he had one of the best cars on Sunday. If you look at my betting model, he does lead that model by a pretty good chunk. He was leading it before Sunday's race, so it's not just because of Sunday as well. So I think Harvick stands out. If you want to pivot, I think that Joey Logano is interesting starting near the front, but should have good latch lead upside and good finishing upside. And then also Kyle Busch starting behind Kevin Harvick after some issues on Sunday. Both those guys stand out. But for me, the top end guy you need to roster is going to be Kevin Harvick. Like I said, it makes sense. The guy just won this past Sunday. You look at Jim's betting model and he's one of the favorites here in that point and that place differential that you get on Fandall voting 20 to hopefully one makes Kevin Harvick certainly one of the favorite drivers you got to put in your lineup on Wednesday. Well, if you don't like Kevin Harvick because, hey, he's not going to win two in a row, maybe you go with the person that finished in second. And that would be Alex Bowman, who is starting, well, inverted. He's starting 19th on Wednesday. And hopefully that place differential will come into play for him as well. Yeah, I think that Bowman, a lot of the value here shows the value of actually watching the race on Sunday. I'm not like a grind the tape truther, but if you watch that race, you could tell that there were kind of three drivers who seem to be the class of the field. And those were Kevin Harvick, Alex Bowman and Brad Keselowski. And Bowman will start 19th. He is also very cheap at $10,600 and referencing the betting model once again, Bowman ranks fourth for me there. He's 10-six. Meanwhile, every driver who is ranked ahead of him is $12,200 or more expensive. So you're getting really good value on a driver who has pretty good odds to win this race. There have been two races prior to Darlington this year that have been somewhat similar to this track. Those were at Fontana and at Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, Bowman had a chance to win, but had a late caution kind of nipped him in the bud there. Then in Fontana, he wrecked the field and he won the race pretty handedly there. Then we had that race in Darlington on Sunday where Bowman once again was crazy fast as were his teammates at Hendrick Motorsports. So I think Alex Bowman starting 19th is a cheap way to get major place differential upside and he could get you a win as well. So he gives you a high floor due to where he's starting, gives you a massive ceiling as well. You're not breaking the bank to get there. I think that Bowman is definitely a driver you want to get to and it could be a part of a really good balanced build allowing you to get his teammates. We'll talk about here in just one second. Alex Bowman priced just here at $10,600 allows you to do a lot of maneuvering in line-up a really fairly balanced line-up rather than stars and scrubs. Bowman in a good spot according to Jim's betting model and obviously has raced well here this season including on Sunday at Darlington. Bowman seems like an obvious choice to put in your line-ups. Always an obvious choice, at least to me. It's Jimmy Johnson who was racing really, really well on Sunday before crash kind of did him and he was leading the pack at the time. Of course it didn't end so well. He's gonna start in the 38th spot. So kind of similar right based on place differential and you get him in there knowing the time driver that Jimmy Johnson is, you really could score a lot of points in that way. Yeah, absolutely. We were slobbering over Harvick because he's starting 20th but Jimmy Johnson's starting 38th. So the place differential upside there is massive and as you said, he was leading that race before that wreck occurred. So we know that he can run well and finish well and that's a key. But it's also again, kind of like Bowman it wasn't just Darlington where Johnson ran really well. He was also good in Fontana which is another track with heavy tire wear. That's a good thing for him. He also had a seventh place average running position in Darlington last year. Veterans seem to do well on this track in general. Kevin Harvick is an older guy. He won yesterday's race. Johnson was running really well before that crash. So I think that what you're getting here is similar to Alex Bowman. He is a cash game building block with monster upside. You don't get a lot more place differential potential. We had with Jimmy Johnson right here. He was running really well before the stoppage this year obviously had a fast car once again on Sunday. So it kind of just lines up really well. The only detriment to Johnson is that he will be super popular because everyone's going to go this way. But honestly, I don't care all that much. He is still someone I try to get overweight to relative to the field just because there is a reason the chalk is the chalk. And it's because he is the objective best play in the field. So $10,000 Johnson, a guy you build around for cash games and you try to get overweight on tournaments because sometimes it makes sense to swallow the chalk. And I think we're here with Jimmy Johnson. This is going to be one of those instances. Yeah, you don't always want to go with chalk. I understand that it's not fun. It's not exciting. But Jimmy Johnson, price is just $10,000. Starting in the 38th spot, 10th driver that he is, 10th car that he drives. Jimmy Johnson is going to be in everybody's lineup. But everybody includes you. So he's got to be in your lineup as well. We know popular he is. We know how not sexy it's going to be. Jimmy Johnson belongs in your lineup on Wednesday. Let's move on here. Now, away from the top plays for a moment, let's move on to William Byron here. He's priced at $9,000. He's starting right around Jimmy Johnson here at the 35th position. Why do you like him on Wednesday? Yes, we said that Jimmy Johnson wrecked at the end of the opening stage and did not win it. The guy who won because Johnson wrecked was William Byron. And what's impressive about Byron winning that opening stage that he actually started that race effectively 16th. It was technically 18th, but he moved up a row with Kyle Busch starting in the back of the pack. So started 16th, worked his way forward, and was running second before that Johnson crash. That shows you just how good this car was for William Byron. He eventually, though, in the second stage, he wrecked as well, got in the wall, did want to finish in the race, but was kind of limping around for the rest of the way. But now he's going to start at 35th all the way back there with Johnson. And he's a little bit cheaper as well. This is the third time we've seen William Byron have a really good car in Darlington, but not converted into a good finish. You could view that as a concern, but it's also a sign that he is due for some regression at Darlington, especially when you consider the fact that he is so young. Eventually, things are going to click together for him and he'll put together a full race. And that very well could be on Wednesday this week. So Byron is very similar to Johnson where he has a massive floor, but also has a path to a really good day. And I think that even some chance to win here, which you don't have to get at a driver's who have a salary of $9,000. So Byron, I know there's been some tough luck here and I know the wrecks can be frustrating, but he is a good driver. He is in great equipment. He's starting at the back. He checks every single box that he wants. So for $9,000, he, like Johnson, someone we should build around even though we know he will be popular. Again, the popularity, it doesn't necessarily matter when it just makes all that much sense. William Byron has been racing well. As you mentioned, all the success at Darlington, he hasn't converted it yet. And that regression word, in this case, it's positive regression, where things are just going to fall his way. He's not going to get into a wreck. His car is not going to fall apart. He's just going to finish well. And that's what we expect from William Byron, or at least we hope, on Wednesday. Up next, it's Chris Buscher, who is priced at $7,300, a little bit cheaper than someone the drivers we've talked about. He's starting in the 30 second spot. What do you like about Chris Buscher on Wednesday? Yeah, the first four drivers we discussed, Greg, were all really good on Sunday. And Chris Buscher sucked. He was the guy that Johnson ran into, leading to that wreck. And the reason that Johnson ran into him is because Buscher was slower and about to get lapsed. That's a pretty major concern. And Buscher didn't get a lot better as that race went along. But part of the reason he didn't get better could have been because of the damage he sustained when Johnson ran to the back of him, which may have slowed his car down. So that's a concern. And maybe you look at this and want to shy away from Chris Buscher as a result of that. And I think that's a very valid concern to bring up with Chris Buscher as well. But he's starting in 30 second. That is a good thing for us because it gives us additional flexibility with where he finishes. You don't need to finish as well to pay off our DFS if you're starting in the back. So a lot of flexibility here with Chris Buscher. We've also seen his teammate, Ryan Newman, ran really well on Sunday. He was actually up on the top 10 at times, had a really solid day. And now they can take the knowledge they gained from Newman's race and apply that to Chris Buscher's car for Wednesday, which will be a new car, which is a blessing for him. That is to be sure. So the car for Buscher should be better on Wednesday. I also don't have a lot of questions about the talent with Chris Buscher because we've seen him do well at Darlington in the past, even when he was in bad equipment in past years. He had a top 14 average running position here, both in 2018 and 2019. And his equipment, at least in theory, is now better than it was for those races. So he is risky due to the poor performance on Sunday. And I think that that is worth noting. He is not as big of a staple as we should view guys like Byron and Johnson as being. But I think that with Chris Buscher having had success at the past in Darlington, given that Newman was pretty good on Sunday and with Buscher starting so far back, I'm gonna go back to the well. It bit me pretty bad on Sundays. I had a lot of Buscher then as well, but I think he makes sense once again. It is kind of risky, but I'm willing to take that risk because of the positives that Buscher provides. Buscher is a little risky given how he performed over the weekend. But the average running position is actually pretty good for Chris Buscher. In historically speaking, here at Darlington, he's in a new car, new equipment that's ideally going to be better. They learned from their mistakes here on Sunday. And hopefully that leads to a good race with Chris Buscher, or at least for Jim, who's gonna have him back in his lineups. One last driver I want to mention, you're all over this one here, Jim, over the weekend. And that's Tyler Redick. He really liked him and his teammate Austin Dillon. He's priced at $6,700 on Wednesday. You can start from the 14th position. I believe he finished seventh on Sunday. Redick drove well, and he's still priced relatively cheaply again. I think you have to like Redick once again at Darlington on Wednesday. Yeah, this is one of the situations where we got a little bit lucky, Greg, because the salaries for this race came out before the end of the race on Sundays. They didn't know how good Tyler Redick was gonna be, but there were times in that race where he had the best car on the field. You mentioned that he finished seventh. That is despite the fact that he had a pit road violation and had to restart at the back of the pack about midway through. So it kinda had to wonder where Tyler Redick would have finished had he not had that violation. He did wind up finishing seventh, which means he will start 14th. And yes, that does mean that he's starting a little bit higher than the other drivers we have discussed so far. But he had a 13th place average running position on Sunday, and I think that kinda undersells what he did as well. And we've seen him do this at Darlington before in the Xenides series, which is the AAA of NASCAR. He had a top three finish there in both 2018 and 2019, in that series, so probably not a fluke. I think that that makes him really interesting even though he will start 14th. I think that he is a juice to finish top 10. Once again, as he did on Sunday, if you can get a top 10 finish out of a driver at $6,700, I don't really care as much about the place differential upside. I just want the finishing points and Redick is a pretty good bet to get those. Now, if you do want some increased flexibility and wanna go with the driver starting further back so you can have a little bit of leeway, I think that Cole Custer fits that really well. He is starting 22nd and he would work. If you wanna go back to Ricky Stenhouse Jr., he's starting 40th. In theory, you could do that. I probably won't, but I understand why you would want to due to the place differential upside. But with Tyler Redick, the equipment is good, the talent is great, and he's starting far enough back where you do have a little leeway. So you have options in this range, specifically with Cole Custer. Not gonna mention Stenhouse again, but I think that Tyler Redick is worth the risk at $6,700 given the upside he possesses. Cole Custer, a legitimate option. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., not really. But Tyler Redick certainly is. He may be starting 14th, but the history is really good here. And the talent, it's also real. There's a lot of like with Tyler Redick certainly coming into his own. He's had a lot of success at Darlington. So let's take advantage on Wednesday. There you have it. Those are the picks for the next Cup race. Wednesday with NASCAR, just moving and moving. Someone for us to watch, get excited about, play a little DFS with. Jim, appreciate the time and have fun. Yeah, thank you, Greg. I appreciate it. Hopefully there is no rain on Wednesday cause it looks like things may be a little bit dicey there, but either way, we should get a race in at some point and I'm very much looking forward to it. Enjoy your week and hopefully I'll talk to you again soon, Greg. Absolutely, I certainly will. Rain or shine, we're here for you. For Jim Sannis, I'm Greg Sussman. You're with the race, everybody. Have some fun and stay safe.