LineStar® Weekly Pitstop - Cook Out Southern 500

🔥Written by 2020,2023 FBWC, 2021 KoS and 2023(x3) FWRC qualifier @joejets19

💬Join the LineStar NASCAR Chat for info from experts.

🔗Download the Cook Out Southern 500 Cheat Sheet

Cook Out Southern 500🏁

Happy Labor Day Weekend to everyone. I hope you are enjoying the last taste of summer. This race is significant for many different reasons. This is the first race of the first round of the playoffs. Over the next ten weeks, the following sixteen drivers will be battling it out to be crowned the 2023 NASCAR Cup Champion: William Byron, Martin Truex Jr, Denny Hamlin, Chris Buescher, Kyle Busch, Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell, Ross Chastain, Brad Keselowski, Tyler Reddick, Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney, Michael McDowell, Ricky Stenhouse Jr, Kevin Harvick and Bubba Wallace. Also, the first round of DraftKings’ Fantasy Racing World Championship will take place this weekend. Good luck to all of those involved. Finally, this is the final race before football dominates the DFS landscape, meaning prize pools are about to shrink drastically.

Now that all of the hoopla is out of the way, let’s talk about the race itself. The Cookout Southern 500 will occur this Sunday evening at Darlington Raceways in Darlington, SC. The track is a 1.336-mile, banked, egg-shaped oval known for its high tire wear. The race will start in the daytime and finish in the evening and will be 500 miles long, so it is an incredible test of a driver’s as well as a car’s durability.

Raceday will be warm, but otherwise, weather will not be an issue whatsoever on Sunday. The race should go off without a hitch and not worry about any Labor Day NASCAR.

_{On to Darlington!}

Scoring Breakdown

At this point, we know how the DK scoring system works, so let's see how many points are available this week:

Laps Led Points =0.25 points per lap led. 367 laps will be run this week, and 91.75 DK points will be awarded (plus any overtime laps).

Place Differential Points = 1 point per position gained or -1 point per position lost.

Fastest Lap Points = 0.45 points per lap not run under caution (roughly 315 laps should run under the green flag for 141.75 possible DK points).

Finishing Position Points: The 40th place driver receives 4 points, and for each position gained, another point is awarded (39th=5, 38th=6…), and the winner gets 46 points.

Lineup Construction 🏗

367 laps at an intermediate track is a loooooooong time, so be ready for a four hour race. This also provides us with a significant amount of dominator points, not as many as a short track, but still enough to make dominators our main focus while building lineups. Historically, Darlington races have either one or two dominators. One dominator race generally occur when a driver starting in the front row completely runs away with the race. Two dominator races will have a driver starting in the front row and then a second driver that typically also starts in the top 10. What is unique about the “Lady is Black” is the frequency at which dominators run into trouble. There have been several instances where a race had two dominators but only one made the perfect lineup because the other driver had some problem. Even still, two drivers starting in the top 10 usually finish in the perfect lineup, so we will want to roster two top 10 drivers that we think can lead laps and finish well.

Our goal for our place differential drivers is a top 15 finish. While a top 10 would be ideal, the last five races here have had perfect lineups where every driver finished in the top 15. That does not mean we want to front-load our lineups, however. Due to the length of the race, Darlington stripe, and rough racing surface, drivers can make big moves here. Roster constructions that have two top 10 drivers and four drivers starting 20th or worse have been very successful here.

Finally, the bargain basement is open this weekend, and this is one of the few tracks where a double dip may be in play. While I always worry about the upside of basement drivers, two of the last seven perfect lineups featured two drivers that cost less than $6,000, so it would be reasonable to have a small number of your lineups constructed similarly.

Stage 1: 115 Laps

Stage 2: 115 Laps

Stage 3: 137 Laps

Lineup Foundation Targets

Martin Truex Jr. ($10,800 DK, $14,000 FD)

Martin Truex Jr. got loose during his qualifying lap on Saturday and will be starting 31st one Sunday evening. I am fairly certain he will be the highest owned driver in the field this weekend, and that is perfectly fine for cash games and single entry tournaments. A former winner at Darlington, Truex has four top 10 finishes in his last eight races here and loves to lead laps, even when he runs into trouble. While his single lap speed wasn’t the most impressive at practice, he ran top 5 ten and fifteen lap averages. Martin is also a specialist at races that start in the day and end in the evening, so I expect him to be in the top 10 in no time.

Todd Gilliland ($5,200 DK, $3,500 FD)

Yes, it is insane that a Basement Driver makes its way North of the Pitstop, but here we are. Todd Gilliland is driving the 38 car this weekend, and that is significant because he drove that car to an 11-place finish here this Spring and has other top 20 finishes this year at correlated tracks. Todd is starting 30th on Sunday and actually has two top 15 finishes in three career races at the Track Too Tough to Tame.

Tournament Targets

Denny Hamlin ($11,000 DK, $12,500 FD)

Hamlin is starting 2nd this Sunday and is the most expensive driver on DK for good reason. Denny had three top 5 finishes in his last five races here and a positive place differential in four in the same period. He starts beside his teammate Christopher Bell, and the two seem to have very good cars this weekend. While Bell was better on a single lap basis, Hamlin was better over the long run. Combining his long run speed with his significantly better track history, I think Hamlin is the driver to watch out for on Sunday.

Michael McDowell ($7,400 DK, $6,200 FD)

This is a very risky tournament play this weekend, but hear me out. McDowell starts 9th on Sunday and ran a very solid single lap speed in practice on Saturday. Considering all of the high priced drivers starting further back in the field, we will need low priced drivers to overperform. If we want two top 10 drivers, including at least one dominator, plus four other drivers with top 15 potential, a stars and scrubs lineup construction starts to look really good. Due to his low price, McDowell only needs to pick up one spot to hit value. He has two top 10 finishes in his last three races here, and both came in races where he qualified well. While there is a small chance that this play blows up completely, McDowell is having a career year and has the playoffs as an extra motivation this year so this may be the type of play that sets our lineups apart from the rest.

Bargain Basement

Justin Haley ($5,500 DK, $4,200 FD)

Haley starts 29th on Sunday and is another basement driver with more upside this weekend than usual. Haley is coming off of three straight top 19 finishes here, including two top 8s. While I don’t expect a top 8 finish from Justin this weekend, his 20th best single lap speed and top 20 lap averages indicate he has a much better car than where he qualified and should be able to pick up a significant number of spots.

Other Drivers to Consider

Here are three more drivers I like at Darlington that have a chance to make some noise in no particular order:

Austin Cindric ($6,100 DK, $4,500 FD)

William Byron ($10,200 DK, $13,500 FD)

Ryan Preece ($5,900 DK, $4,200 FD)

Top Driver to Avoid

Ryan Blaney ($8,600 DK, $7,800 FD)

This is not the most comfortable fade in the world, but Blaney chronically underperforms at Darlington. He is starting 4th on Sunday, and I don’t think he has a top 5 car. He only has two top 10 finishes in his entire career here and no top 5s. He may hang out towards the front of the field for the entire race. I don’t expect him to make the perfect lineup.

Pitstop Picks

2022 results: 17-57 (-27.3 u)

2023 results: 12-33 (-10.75 u)

I am doubling down on McDowell this weekend. As mentioned previously, he starts in the top 10 and will be on the hunt for points. He will look to hold on to his track position and maybe pick up a spot or two, and that is exactly what we want from a plus money top 10 bet.

The smallest fleet in the race is also the fastest this weekend. Both cars on the front row are Joe Gibbs Toyotas, and Tyler Reddick starts third in a Toyota for good measure. There is a line of Fords starting behind them that looks scary, but I don’t think they will be able to match the Toyota’s long run speed over 500 miles.

Pitstop Poll

2023 Results: 3-4 (2.85 u)

A new feature this season will be the Pitstop Poll. I will select one of the groups posted on the DK Sportsbook and leave it up to the readers to vote on their preferred bet. I will keep track of this throughout the season to see how well we are doing. This week’s selection:

Thanks for reading, and good luck this weekend! Be sure to join me in the LineStar NASCAR chat!

Be sure to download the Cook Out Southern 500 and find me on Twitter. Good Luck!