DraftKings NASCAR DFS Picks for Daytona: Fantasy NASCAR Strategy and Picks for 2025 Daytona 500

NASCAR is back!

The traditional season-opening Daytona 500 kicks off the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season as 41 drivers look to go down in history as the 67th champion of the Great American Race.

Daytona is a 2.5-mile steeply banked oval where speeds would be excessive, so NASCAR limits car speeds through aerodynamic modification and engine restrictions. As a result, cars run in a big pack thanks to the draft.

That makes it easy to both move forward and move backward in the race with either the right draft or push or by getting caught out with no drafting help and dropping to the rear of the field like a rock.

And then, with a win in the sport’s most important race on the line, sometimes things get a little too dicey, and one mistake can lead to some big-time wrecks involving a dozen or even more cars.

That means at Daytona, more so than any other track, unpredictability reigns supreme.

As such, I take a different approach to NASCAR DFS analysis and lineup building, more so with Daytona than any other track.

When, long term, 90% of the finishing order is unpredictable, game theory becomes more important than handicapping the drivers themselves. So I’ll take you through my personal Daytona game theory and then which drivers it may impact the most.

For those with a lower risk tolerance, I’ll provide some alternative options, but the best way to see what I think is best is by using my NASCAR projections in the NASCAR Models on FantasyLabs, complete with floor, ceiling, median, and ownership projections.

My projections, along with Stephen Young’s from RotoGrinders, are available in our new NASCAR DFS package. You can read more about what the package entails here.

Let’s not skip the best part — my Perfect% metric — a metric that tells you how often certain racers appear in the optimal lineup when running 10,000 race simulations.

And don’t forget about the tools that FantasyLabs has to offer like our Lineup Optimizer to effortlessly create up to 300 lineups or our Lineup Builder if you like to hand-build your lineups.

So, without further ado, here’s my strategy guide and NASCAR DFS picks for the Daytona 500.

Daytona 500 DraftKings DFS Tournament Strategy

My goal when I play NASCAR DFS tournaments is always to finish first place. So, I have no problem employing strategies that might make the common DFS player uncomfortable.

If you find your risk tolerance isn’t the same as mine, once again, I’ll recommend gravitating toward using my projections and Perfect% metric as your default option.

However, I think there are some supreme leverage spots in this year’s Daytona 500, starting with the chalk in the back.

Brad Keselowski, Martin Truex Jr., Alex Bowman, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. should be the chalk in this race. All four drivers start 31st or worse, making them the place differential kings of this slate. You’ll notice all four drivers have a projected ownership at or above their projected Perfect%.

But in a race that’s as unpredictable as Daytona and with a huge $500,000 first-place prize on the line, I think not only should we get closer to their Perfect%, but actually gain some leverage by going even lower than their Perfect% in our personal exposures.

That allows us more exposure to drivers with nearly the same upside since almost anyone can win this race, and certainly, every driver has the ability to finish inside the top 10.

My theory is that even if I have Brad Keselowski in 25% of my rosters, then even if he ends up optimal I still have plenty of lineups with him in it. But what’ll happen is I’ll then be overweight on some drivers that project to be far under-rostered relative to their projected optimal. Inevitably, they’ll end up paired in various combinations with Keselowski in those 25% of lineups, which more than makes up for the lost leverage I have on Keselowski, should he end up optimal.

So, who are the drivers we want to get extra exposure to? I’ll list those drivers as my tournament picks.

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Daytona 500 DraftKings DFS Tournament Picks

There are four specific drivers I want to be intentionally overweight on.

Justin Haley ($6600) is my first target as a driver who’s performed exceptionally well on superspeedways across all three of NASCAR’s top-level series. He didn’t get to show his stuff much in his duel race, thanks to Chandler Smith turning down on his nose and cutting his race short. Haley has what it takes to win this race, and at around 25% ownership, give or take a bit, and a Perfect% a bit higher, I’m planning on ramping up his usage even higher than that.

Zane Smith ($5800) is another driver I particularly like in that Front Row Motorsports equipment that’s been very fast. Smith is a bargain bin driver and definitely doesn’t have the name recognition of the more casual NASCAR DFS player. That makes this a prime spot to ramp up his usage as well when the large prize pool entices a few extra players that may gravitate toward bigger names.

Noah Gragson ($6800) is Smith’s teammate. Gragson has an even better opportunity to end up optimal than Smith does by my simulations, despite starting three spots ahead of him and sacrificing three potential place differential points. That’s because Gragson has projected race-winning capabilities even above Smith’s by my model’s projections.

Carson Hocevar ($6500) is the last of the quartet that starts in the 30s who I want over-exposure to. Hocevar is an incredibly aggressive young talent but has had a habit of hanging back in these races, hoping to survive, then using his aggression late in the race to take a shot at a top-five finish or even a win. It hasn’t worked out yet, and he didn’t show off his stuff in his Duel race after teammate Justin Haley wrecked with their team — Spire Motorsports — only having one backup car, so he probably didn’t make waves with people tuning in for the Duel qualifying races.

Note: while I like being overweight on all four of these drivers, this is still a highly random race. It’s very, very likely only 1-2 of these drivers end up in the optimal lineup. But by using various combinations of them with your chalkier options, you can gain some leverage on the field even if the chalk hits.

Daytona 500 DraftKings DFS Tournament Leans

I have some more thoughts on this slate, but essentially, the overarching theme is that I think Jimmie Johnson ($5500) and Helio Castroneves ($6000) are also going to be overlooked.

Johnson hasn’t put together a finish better than 26th since he retired as a full-time driver. Now, a lot of that is bad luck, and there has also been some self-inflicted damage. But Johnson still races for Legacy Motor Club who has strong results at drafting tracks, including a near-win by Erik Jones in the second Duel qualifying race on Thursday.

Castroneves, meanwhile, seems to be the guy I keep seeing in the “he has a 99% chance to wreck” tweets and jokes out there. Castroneves has not had a quiet week, notably crashing in his Duel race in a comical attempt to avoid some other wrecking cars. Then, in the ARCA race, it seems like he hit every car on the track. But he still survived and went on to finish in the top 10.

My theory is that maybe Castroneves has such issues, potentially getting on or off pit road or in and out of his pit box, that he ends up losing the lead draft and thus avoids the almost inevitable big one and ends up finishing something like 15th randomly. That makes me want to almost roster him a ton, but I think the more prudent play is to stick closer to my model’s Perfect% on him. With a projected usage below 20%, you’d still be getting a bit of leverage on the field by playing him near his optimal amount.

Daytona 500 DraftKings DFS Dominators

Daytona is not a track I worry about dominators at all. With the race so highly variable, the factor that’s going to matter the most is the combination of place differential points and finishing position points, which always favors the drivers starting farther back.

That said, it’s not unheard of for a driver to turn in a half-dominating performance. So, while I’ll probably be underweight on most, if not all, of these drivers, here’s my list of most likely dominators, with their starting position in parenthesis:

1. Joey Logano (10)
2. Ryan Blaney (16)
3. Austin Cindric (2)
4. William Byron (5)
5. Brad Keselowski (34)
6. Chase Elliott (17)
7. Chris Buescher (6)
8. Denny Hamlin (8)
9. Kyle Busch (21)
10. Kyle Larson (22)

Aside from Keselowski, who starts 34th, the rest of the drivers start 22nd or better. The farther forward they start, and the farther down this list they are, the less likely I am to roster them.

Instead, I think the way to think of the non-Keselowski drivers in this group is this: roster a maximum of two of these drivers (aside from Keselowski, who starts far enough back that we can include him as a third) and hope they both get top-five finishes or better. But in most cases, rostering zero or 1 of these drivers is best.

Daytona 500 DraftKings DFS Paul Menard Pick of the Week!

The segment that everyone loves is back!

For those who don’t know what the Paul Menard Pick of the Week (PMPOTW) is, here’s the story.

I once told everyone to go significantly overweight on Paul Menard at a Daytona summer race because he projected to be severely underplayed.

All he did was finish third and score myself and my readers a massive return on their investment, becoming a legend in my circles in the process.

So, for the 2025 Daytona 500, the “Paul Menard pick of the week” is … drumroll please … Shane van Gisbergen ($6300)!

I like being overweight on SVG — without going too crazy — knowing he’s now had a full season of Xfinity Series experience and has racked up nearly a dozen races in stock cars at drafting tracks. This is no longer a new style of racing for him, and I think he has the ability to push his way forward in a thinned-out field if he avoids the carnage and is in the mix late.

Daytona 500 DraftKings DFS Cash Game Strategy

Instead of picks, I’ll say the same thing I do for every drafting track. Roster drivers with great equipment who have a lower chance of encountering issues, starting in the back.

That potentially eliminates Johnson and Castroneves who each are certainly above the baseline expected incident/problem rate. But I’m even fine if you want to use them in your cash lines because if they avoid trouble, they provide two of the six-highest floors.