Kansas Speedway is, in some people’s eyes, your typical 1.5-mile race track. However, this track was repaved in 2012 and we believe that it now produces some pretty good racing compared to your typical cookie-cutter track. Another trend that you tend to see here is that some drivers are what we like to call “fools gold”–meaning they look great during practice and qualifying but tend to disappoint during the actual race itself. Obviously those are the drivers that you need to keep off of your DraftKings rosters.
DraftKings Drivers to Avoid for the GoBowling.com 400 at Kansas
Ryan Blaney ($7,100) – You always hear that the sky is the limit for the two good rookies this season (Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney), and while that is true, we believe that the sky is kind of limited for the latter right now. Blaney just doesn’t have the equipment or team that Chase Elliott does, and that really shows on race days. Now, the #21 Ford has qualified pretty well in about half of the races this season, but let’s take a look at how a couple of those events ended up for Ryan. He started 14th at Fontana and ended up finishing 35th, equaling a negative 21 place differential. He started 7th at Texas, the other Saturday night race this season, and finished 29th–negative 22. For Saturday night’s GoBowling.com 400 at Kansas, Blaney will roll off the grid from 7th, and while you may think he has the opportunity for a top 10 finish, it’s nowhere near a lock. We’d say it isn’t even over 50% probability. Blaney just starts a little too high this weekend for us to recommend him in DraftKings.
Denny Hamlin ($8,700) – There’s going to be a lot of DraftKings players looking at Denny Hamlin as the missing piece to their puzzle, and we can’t really blame them. That $8,700 price point sure does sound like a bargain for a top, elite talent like Hamlin. However, let’s take a step back and look at the situation. Denny qualified 3rd for this weekend’s GoBowling.com, which is good for some fantasy leagues. Not DraftKings. There’s no reason to believe that Hamlin is going to go out and lead a bunch of laps on Saturday night, and that’s really the only possible way that you could justify putting him on your roster. He has a career average finish of 15.4 at Kansas Speedway with just five top 10s in fifteen career starts. Also, Hamlin has qualified well in most of the races this season, but he has also wound up finishing worse than he started in seven of the ten 2016 Sprint Cup events. Why would you want to give away points like that? Even if Hamlin finished 10th on Saturday night he would only net around 24 points in DraftKings.
Clint Bowyer ($7,000) – There are races when it is acceptable to take a shot with Clint Bowyer, and there are races when it’s not. Last week at Talladega was an acceptable race. This week at Kansas is not. Yes, this is his home track and you know he wants to perform well for his friends and family, but the fact of the matter is that this #15 Chevrolet is garbage in any race that requires more skill and horsepower than it does luck. Bowyer has finished between 18th and 38th in the four intermediate track races that we have ran this season, and while he does start way back in 33rd for Saturday night’s GoBowling.com 400, is he really worth that $7,000 price tag? We could maybe understand you going with Clint if he cost, say, $5,500 this week, but $7,000 is downright laughable. Don’t fall for the trap.
That’s really all we have for our DraftKings avoid list this week. There are no other drivers that are glaringly obvious that we should stay away from at Kansas. This race is going to be interesting on Saturday night and we should see a lot of comers and goers, so you could make a legitimate case for many drivers having a good race this weekend. Good luck!
