The second race of the NASCAR Cup Series season is the start of the West Coast swing in not-so-sunny California.
Read on for my daily fantasy NASCAR DraftKings picks for the 2023 Pala Casino 400 at Auto Club Speedway, airing Sunday, Feb. 26 at 3:30 p.m. ET on FOX.
This is a bit of a bittersweet week for me, as I’m sure it is for everyone heading to Fontana, Calif. I love this track; it’s had some great races in the last few years thanks to its high tire wear. It’s also the closest to my hometown. But it’s the last time drivers will take on this 2-mile oval, as it’s set to be reconfigured to a half-mile track in the future.
That means it’s the final time we get to play on DraftKings with this layout.
When you make your DraftKings rosters this week, try to target drivers that are good at high-tire wear racetracks, like Darlington Raceway and Homestead-Miami Speedway. You can also look at drivers’ historical stats at Auto Club.
Keep in mind that there’s rain expected most of Saturday, so you might not get to see how drivers will perform in their limited practice time. The starting lineup would be set by the rulebook if qualifying gets rained out, which is likely the metric formula used predominantly in 2020. If this does happen, there would be some really good value on DraftKings, since so many top drivers crashed at Daytona International Speedway last week.
Before I share this week’s picks for Auto Club, here’s a look at how last week’s drivers did on DraftKings:
| DraftKings Salary | Driver | DraftKings Score |
| $10,300 | Denny Hamlin | 31.2 |
| $10,100 | Ryan Blaney | 35.25 |
| $9,400 | Bubba Wallace | 21.05 |
| $8,200 | Austin Cindric | 2.45 |
| $8,000 | Austin Dillon | 4.7 |
| $6,800 | Ryan Preece | -6.85 |
| $6,500 | Michael McDowell | -1.2 |
| $5,600 | Justin Haley | 7.7 |
A lot of these drivers were caught up in late crashes and weren’t able to get a good finish. But that happens sometimes at superspeedways; you can’t really control whether your driver will get lucky or not.
Let’s review the NASCAR DraftKings scoring rules.
The winner on the racetrack tallies 45 points, while second place gets 42, third 41 and so on. Tenth place scores 34, while 11th gets 32, and decreasing by one from there through 20th. This pattern repeats for 21st through 30th and 31st through 40th.
Additionally, drivers can earn or lose a point depending on where they finish. For example, if Christopher Bell started third and won, he would gain two points in addition to his finishing position points,…
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