Martinsville DraftKings NASCAR Fantasy Picks, Projections, & Strategy Breakdown (Blue-Emu 400)

The NASCAR Cup Series is at Martinsville Speedway this weekend for some Saturday night race under the lights! Typically we have 500-lap races at this track, but this weekend it’s down to 400 laps (or 200 miles). With so many laps, it’s going to be important to nail the dominators in DraftKings lineups, but there are plenty of place differential plays to consider and balance as well. It should be a very fun weekend to build DFS lineups for “The Paperclip,” and we’ll do so LIVE!

Jordan is going LIVE on YouTube on Saturday afternoon to build DraftKings lineups and answer questions about the race. It is planned to start at 2:00 pm ET. Visit his YouTube channel (click here) on Saturday at that time and tune in!

DraftKings Fantasy Strategy for Martinsville

• Just like last weekend at Richmond, we need to put a focus on dominator points for Martinsville on Saturday night. This race is scheduled for 400 laps, which means we’re looking at 100 DraftKings FPTS for laps led and probably around 145 DraftKings FPTS for fastest laps, depending on cautions.
• With that being said, there are a ton of place differential plays in the field this weekend as well, so we’re going to have to keep that in mind, too. This will be a more balanced lineup building approach than Richmond was, in my opinion.
• Martinsville is a half-mile flat track. We’ve already raced at two flat tracks this season (Phoenix and Richmond) but those don’t compare super close to Martinsville. You can also throw Loudon and Nashville into this short, flat category if you’d like.

Optimal Lineup According to Jordan’s Projections

The optimal DraftKings lineup for Martinsville on Saturday night according to my Projections is:

• Chase Elliott
• Ryan Blaney
• William Byron
• AJ Allmendinger
• Bubba Wallace
• Corey LaJoie

DraftKings NASCAR Picks for the Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 400

Chase Elliott ($11,200) – I don’t think you can go against Chase Elliott as a cash play option in DraftKings on Saturday night. Obviously there’s an opportunity to go underweight here when mass entering GPPs, but if you’re building only a handful of lineups, I think you need Chase Elliott on there in the majority of them, if not all. The Hendrick cars are just so fast this weekend, and Martinsville is a great track for Chase. He’s led 575 laps here over the last six races and has also finished 1st or 2nd in three of those. In practice on Friday, the #9 Chevrolet had the best 20-, 25-, and 30-lap averages, and with Aric Almirola, Cole Custer, and Chris Buescher starting 2nd through 4th on Saturday night, Elliott should be able to easily break away from the field at the start and gobble up those early dominator points.

William Byron ($9,500) – It took a couple of years for William Byron to “get good” here at Martinsville, but he’s definitely up there now. Over the last five races at this track, Willy B has finished top 5 in three of them and 8th in another. He wrecked out of the 2020 fall race, so you can kind of throw that result out the window. As far as this weekend goes, Byron starts up in 5th, so rolling with Chase Elliott and Byron in the same lineup is kind of risky, but you should all know by now that that’s how I play when it comes to DraftKings. In practice on Friday, Byron was strong, ranking 4th in 5-lap average, 2nd in 10-lap average, and then best in 15-lap average. He didn’t make a run longer than that. If he has similar long-run speed as Chase Elliott does, I could easily see these two being the main dominators on Saturday night.

Ty Dillon ($5,500) – Neither of the Petty GMS Chevrolets showed a ton of speed here at Martinsville on Friday, but I’m not overly concerned about it. Ty Dillon starting 34th at $5,500 is a chalky play but a very safe play. Make sure you tune into the live stream because we’ll talk about pivoting to Harrison Burton ($5,600) or Corey LaJoie ($5,300) here, but for cash lineups, Ty is the play. He’s been a consistent 17th-to-24th-place finisher all season long since Daytona, and here at Martinsville specifically, he only has one result worse than 24th in Cup Series competition. Safe and consistent: you can’t ask for much more out of this price range in DraftKings.

Notes On Other Drivers

HIGH-RISK, HIGH REWARD TOURNAMENT PLAY: Kyle Busch ($10,000) – At the end of the Stacking Dennys podcast this week (listen below), RotoDoc and I made our picks to win the race. I said I had a gut feeling that Kyle Busch takes it. Even though the Toyotas fell off majorly on the speed chart during the long runs in practice (this is a major concern), I still think Kyle Busch can end up being a factor here on Saturday night, and as far as DraftKings goes, I think it’s a great position to be overweight on him. Looking at the highest-priced drivers this weekend, Rowdy is sandwiched in there between the major chalk up top (Truex, Elliott, Blaney) along with the semi-chalk of Larson, Hamlin, Logano, and Byron. When it comes to Martinsville history, Kyle Busch has top 5 finishes in nine of the last thirteen races at this track, and this team had a great run going at Richmond last weekend before the whole tape incident happened. For what it’s worth, Busch had the 2nd-best 20-lap average during practice on Friday, but as I said before, all of the Toyotas fell off majorly after that mark. Hopefully they get that fixed.

What About AJ Allmendinger ($6,600)? – AJ Allmendinger is starting dead last in 36th since he wasn’t able to make a qualifying run, and he’ll also have to serve a pass-through penalty once the race starts. That will likely put Allmendinger at least two laps down. From there, it’s going to be about luck. Martinsville is one of AJ’s best tracks, and if he can get on the lead lap, he should be able to easily make the optimal lineup with his $6,600 salary. The only question is whether the cautions will fly early enough and at the right time for that to happen. Personally, I think Allmendinger will be fine and is a very good DFS play this weekend.

Stacking Dennys Podcast with Jordan & RotoDoc

Martinsville Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 400 DraftKings Driver Projections

The following chart takes into account the very basics: the starting position and the projected finish of each driver. The projected finishes are averaged from six different ranking systems. Also factored in are projected laps led and fastest laps for each driver. You can click the headers below to sort the chart by that attribute. By default, it is sorted by average projected FPTS.