Las Vegas Post Practice Fantasy NASCAR Predictions
Rain in the desert… only when NASCAR is in town! This weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was scheduled to have two practices on Friday with qualifying on Saturday afternoon, but Mother Nature had other plans, as rain plagued the track on the second day. This isn’t an ideal situation for the first “real” race of the 2020 Fantasy NASCAR season, but it’s what we have to deal with.
With the starting lineup set by the 2019 Owners Points standings, Kyle Busch will lead the field to the green for Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 and the full starting lineup by clicking here. There were two practices held on Friday, and those speeds can be found here: Practice #1 — Happy Hour. As always, you should check out our in-depth notes for those practices as well, and those can be found here: Practice #1 — Happy Hour.
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Final Top 25 Fantasy NASCAR Rankings for Las Vegas
1. Joey Logano – Starts 5th – DraftKings Price: $10,700 – FanDuel Price: $13,000 – Slingshot Price: $12,200
The #22 Ford never really showed race-winning speed during the two practice sessions here in Vegas on Friday but I still fully expect for Joey Logano to challenge for a Pennzoil 400 top 5 on Sunday, if not a win. In the first practice session of the weekend, Logano was 4th-fastest on the speed chart, while his fastest lap in the Happy Hour session was just 19th. However, LVMS has been a great track for Joey over the years, and he hasn’t finished outside of the top 10 here since 2013. He’s also the defending winner of this race, and has four top 4 results in the last six Vegas races. Looking at average finishes on the 1.5-mile tracks in 2019, Logano was 4th-best in the series with 9.4. If you take out Atlanta–since we didn’t run the full “new” package there–Joey’s average finish jumps up to 8.0 and that was the best the Cup garage. He’s a solid Fantasy NASCAR pick this weekend.
2. Kevin Harvick – Starts 3rd – DraftKings Price: $12,000 – FanDuel Price: $13,500 – Slingshot Price: $12,500
Don’t be surprised if Kevin Harvick gets his third win at Las Vegas this weekend. The #4 Ford swept the top 5 here last year, and Harvick has finished between 1st and 4th in four of the last seven races at this track. This weekend, after coming in at 12th-fastest in first practice, “Happy” posted the best ten-lap average in Happy Hour and also had the 4th-fastest overall speed over the course of both of Friday’s practices. Looking back at last year, Harvick was arguably the most dominant on 1.5-mile tracks, with an average of 31.3 fastest laps per race on these venues along with 53.6 laps led per race. His average finish was 8.3, while his average running position was 7.3–which was the best in the series by over two positions. It’ll take some major misfortune for Harvick not to finish in the top 5 on Sunday.
3. Martin Truex, Jr. – Starts 2nd – DraftKings Price: $11,600 – FanDuel Price: $11,500 – Slingshot Price: $12,700
This wlll be the first real test for Martin Truex, Jr., as it’s the first “real” race without Cole Pearn atop the pit box. But if there are minimal changes from last year’s notes and setups, Truex should be just fine. On the 1.5-mile tracks in 2019, Martin had a series-best average finish of 7.7 while ranking 2nd-best in average running position at 9.4. Even more interesting is the fact that Truex had the 2nd-best place differential average on this track type last year, at +8.5 spots per race. Buescher was the best in that category at +9.5 spots per race. All of the Joe Gibbs Toyotas looked down on speed during practice here on Friday, but Truex was the fastest among those, for what it’s worth. I clocked him at the 11th-best overall average speed over those two sessions.
