The Daytona Road Course! Sound unfamiliar? It probably does. This venue wasn’t on the schedule to start the season, but with the pandemic, NASCAR has decided to add it–and they’re throwing all the drivers out there on Sunday without any practice or qualifying. This week’s starting lineup was set by NASCAR’s new formula method, and Kevin Harvick will have the honor of leading the field into the first turn on Sunday. That could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how aggressive drivers are to start. Without any track history, though we’re going to lean heavily on performances at the other road courses, which is exactly what this algorithm model is doing.
There are quite a few statistics that go into the Power Index formula, including recent performance both overall and at road courses specifically, similar track performance, projected strength of the car, practice speeds, starting position, and a few other variables.
Here’s a quick overview of the Power Index number: essentially, zero (0) is considered average; the more negative a number is in the Power Index, the stronger that driver is considered in the Fantasy NASCAR world. The opposite holds true as well: the more above zero a driver is, the worse he is considered for Fantasy NASCAR that week.
Daytona Road Course Fantasy NASCAR Power Rankings
| Rank | Driver | Power Index |
| 1. | Harvick, Kevin | -42.6 |
| 2. | Truex, Jr., Martin | -35.1 |
| 3. | Elliott, Chase | -34.5 |
| 4. | Hamlin, Denny | -31.4 |
| 5. | Busch, Kurt | -30.7 |
| 6. | Keselowski, Brad | -29.6 |
| 7. | Busch, Kyle | -26.5 |
| 8. | Blaney, Ryan | -24.9 |
| 9. | Logano, Joey | -23.8 |
| 10. | Bowyer, Clint | -19.3 |
| 11. | Almirola, Aric | -13.7 |
| 12. | DiBenedetto, Matt | -12.8 |
| 13. | Jones, Erik | -10.5 |
| 14. | Johnson, Jimmie | -7.6 |
| 15. | Bowman, Alex | -5.8 |
| 16. | Byron, William | 1.0 |
| 17. | Reddick, Tyler | 2.0 |
| 18. | Kenseth, Matt | 6.4 |
| 19. | Bell, Christopher | 6.8 |
| 20. | Newman, Ryan | 7.4 |
| 21. | McDowell, Michael | 7.8 |
| 22. | Buescher, Chris | 9.2 |
| 23. | Suarez, Daniel | 10.0 |
| 24. | Custer, Cole | 16.7 |
| 25. | Stenhouse, Jr., Ricky | 22.1 |
| 26. | Preece, Ryan | 23.0 |
| 27. | Dillon, Ty | 29.4 |
| 28. | Nemechek, John H | 31.3 |
| 29. | Grala, Kaz | 32.8 |
| 30. | Wallace, Bubba | 33.4 |
| 31. | Gaughan, Brendan | 37.4 |
| 32. | LaJoie, Corey | 39.3 |
| 33. | Yeley, JJ | 40.0 |
| 34. | Davison, James | 40.9 |
| 35. | Houff, Quin | 46.1 |
| 36. | Hill, Timmy | 46.3 |
| 37. | Poole, Brennan | 47.5 |
| 38. | Smithley, Garrett | 47.9 |
| 39. | Sorenson, Reed | 51.5 |
