DraftKings NASCAR DFS Picks for Martinsville: Fantasy NASCAR Strategy and Picks for the Cook Out 400

Martinsville Speedway hosts the seventh race of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, and it seems like it wouldn’t be a NASCAR race weekend if we didn’t mention rain.

There’s a 20% chance that some wet weather could impact this race, and unlike at superspeedways and intermediate tracks, NASCAR will let them race in the damp conditions at a short flat track like Martinsville.

And Martinsville isn’t just any short flat track, it’s the shortest and the flattest. That requires a unique skill set, which allows a few extra drivers into play where they may not normally be in play.

Track position has been huge at Martinsville in the Next Gen era, especially during the spring races at the paperclip. If a driver with a solid Martinsville skill set is able to grab track position, especially if rain or strategy comes into play, they could absolutely hold on for a top-10 finish, so it may behoove us to pay attention to some smaller-name drivers who could shake things up on this particular track as some tournament options.

How do we find those drivers?

Track history, plus of course my practice FLAGS data will help us deduce the potential undervalued contenders.

And as always, you can check out 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 Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway.

Cook Out 400 DraftKings DFS Core Picks

Instead of calling them cash-game picks, I’ll call them core picks, as these are picks I like in all formats. However, it’s important to note that very often core picks tend to go over-rostered in tournaments, so while they should still be used plenty, it may be prudent to sometimes go underweight on these drivers if you think they’ll be significantly over-rostered.

Ryan Blaney ($11,200): Blaney qualified 32nd thanks to going out early in the qualifying session during suboptimal conditions. However, he’s won two of the last three Martinsville races and was third in my practice FLAGS metric. He’s a must-start in cash game formats, and he’s very usable in tournaments too, although I do think he’ll be a bit over-rostered in tourneys.

Chase Elliott ($9900): Elliott topped my FLAGS rankings in practice and starts from the second spot. He has dominator potential at a nice discount, coming in at just $9900 at a strong track for him.

Christopher Bell ($10,200): One way to raise your floor for cash games is to take both Bell and Elliott and likely ensure you grab the early dominator points. Another sneaky benefit of taking Bell: he was arguably the best car the only other time the Cup Series ran an oval in damp conditions, last year on the short flat track at New Hampshire.

Shane Van Gisbergen ($5900): If we’re taking three relatively expensive drivers as core plays, we’ll need a punt, and SVG gives us the perfect punt spot. He finished 12th in his lone Martinsville Cup race last year after starting 29th. This time he starts 33rd, but he was second in FLAGS in practice, albeit on a limited 27-lap sample size.

There’s also the worry that he came in and made changes a couple of times, suggesting he wasn’t too happy with the car. That said, you can’t argue with the speed he showed in practice.

Cook Out 400 DraftKings DFS Tournament Picks

Dominator Pivots: Martinsville is a track-position game, and if you can grab it with strategy or pit stops, you could lead a lot of laps.

That leads me to Denny Hamlin ($10,700) and Joey Logano ($9600) as contrarian dominator options. Hamlin’s pit crew is blazing fast, while Logano and Paul Wolfe are always capable of trying out an alternate strategy.

Both looked very good in practice too, with Hamlin ranking fifth in FLAGS, while Logano was the best over the final 10-lap stretch of laps out of nine cars who ran at least 59 at-pace laps in practice. Those nine cars included big names like Blaney, Hamlin, and Elliott, each of whom I’ve mentioned as drivers I like already.

Bubba Wallace ($7200): I almost put Bubba Wallace in the core spot, but there is a bit of risk with him starting eighth, which isn’t quite in position feel strong about him being a top dominator.

That said, $7200 is laughably cheap for a driver who’s on fire right now and comes to one of his better overall tracks. Wallace was also fastest over five, 10, and 25 consecutive laps in practice.

However, he only shows up eighth in practice FLAGS, because after 25 laps he fell off pretty hard. Wallace was also among those nine drivers that ran at least 59 at-pace laps in practice, but he ranked just seventh of the nine in that lap 50-59 stretch.

That said, if we get some late race restarts, he has a fast short-run car for sure.

Todd Gilliland ($5600): Much like SVG, Gilliland showed speed in practice, but he came into the pits multiple times during practice. Thus, he only put down 28 laps at pace, but at least they were fast.

Gilly fires off from 25th, which is far enough forward that it will keep his ownership down enough to where I’m fine going overweight on him. Gilliland has finishes of 13th or better in exactly half of his six Martinsville Cup starts.

Cook Out 400 DraftKings DFS Paul Menard Pick of the Week

Price, starting spot, and a sluggish performance to start the year has people feeling sour on Cole Custer.

I’m not one of those.

Custer is a driver I gave out for a top-10 finish at 14-1 odds on Action Network’s Running Hot podcast earlier this week, and then all he did was go and back my thoughts up with a sixth-place effort in practice FLAGS. That included the second-best 30-lap average, behind only Ryan Blaney.

Custer starts 22nd, which is a bit farther forward than people might like, and he is more expensive than the likes of Gilliland and SVG, sitting at a $6300 price tag.

In two races here in the Next Gen car, Custer has a 14th-place finish and a 21st that is very misleading. Custer qualified third and finished Stage 1 in third and Stage 2 in fifth before a penalty put him at the rear of the field, leading to the 21st-place result.

That’s a good enough resume for me at what should be sub-10 percent usage. I’d play him a bit north of 10% to get some leverage.