DraftKings NASCAR DFS Picks for Nashville: Fantasy NASCAR DFS Strategy and Picks for the Ally 400

Nashville plays host to the first race of the second half of the NASCAR schedule, as Cup Series drivers contest 300 laps in the Ally 400.

Nashville is a unique, 1.33-mile concrete track with 14 degrees of banking in its turns. Teams will use the same tire combination as Las Vegas, Kansas, and Texas, so certainly using data from those tracks can help. In addition, Dover is the other faster concrete track that NASCAR runs at, so it’s also a good comparable track to use.

In fact, Kansas, Las Vegas, and Dover are the top three comps when looking at how well other tracks predict driver performance at Nashville.

Those tracks, plus Nashville history itself and of course practice and qualifying, should give us a solid picture about who will be strong over the 400 miles at Nashville.

Before we jump into my picks, don’t forget all my NASCAR projections can be found in the NASCAR Models on FantasyLabs, complete with floor, ceiling, median, and ownership projections.

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.

Here are my NASCAR DFS picks for the Ally 400 at Nashville Superspeedway.

Nashville DraftKings DFS Cash Game Strategy

With both Kyle Larson ($10,500) and Denny Hamlin ($10,300) priced below the $11k range, it’s possible to use both in cash-game lineups. The biggest concern of these two for me is Larson, who wasn’t among the fastest cars in his practice group. That said, he showed a ton of pace in qualifying, so I think both are in play for cash games. Certainly Hamlin is the stronger play starting on pole and having the stronger track history in the Next Gen car. The alternative to Larson would be Martin Truex Jr. ($9800), and I do think I prefer him given how fast and consistent he was in Group B in practice, with very little falloff.

Hamlin is likely to dominate the early laps, which should buy Truex time to get close to Larson. Since Truex starts 17th to Larson’s 4th, there’s much more place differential for Truex without costing too much dominator potential thanks to Hamlin likely gobbling up the early dominator points. Truex had a top-three car last year and should contend again this year.

I also love Ross Chastain ($9000), giving us potentially three $9k-plus plays, but it works out thanks to the slight discount on Hamlin and Larson. Chastain has the best track quality rating, and he rolls off 20th and should move forward after a strong practice session that saw him place inside the top 3-5 in most metrics in his group.

In the cheaper tier, A.J. Allmendinger ($6500) is a must-play in cash. He was inside the top six or so in his practice group, and he has always excelled at concrete tracks. By starting 28th, we’re getting a guy that finished inside the top 10 here last year and should have similar place-differential upside again this year.

Nashville DraftKings DFS Tournament Strategy

This is a two- to three-dominator race, and certainly Hamlin and Larson are the top two dominator options. After them, my personal list is:

3. Christopher Bell*

4. Martin Truex Jr.

5. Tyler Reddick

6. Others — Ryan Blaney, Josh Berry, Ty Gibbs, Ross Chastain, Chase Elliott

I put an asterisk near Bell, because while he is the third most likely to dominate per my numbers, if Hamlin gobbles up the early dominator points, I have a hard time seeing Bell ending up in the optimal lineup.

Reddick is also a bit of an enigma. He struggled in practice, coming in multiple times for changes, and didn’t show much single-lap or long-run pace. That said, when qualifying came around, he was fast on both his qualifying laps. He also was probably the best car at Nashville last year prior to losing a wheel on a Stage-2 pit stop. My projections like an overweight play on Reddick, but personally I wouldn’t go as high as the 32% optimal it suggests. Somewhere between his 19% ownership and 32% optimal feels about right.

Bubba Wallace ($7800) is a comfortable play given his mid-tier salary and the fact that we’re not breaking the bank this week up at the top. Wallace had top-five practice times in his group, and he looked really good on the long run.

Speaking of long run, Noah Gragson ($7300) is potentially a great pivot off of a chalkier Bubba. I have Wallace projected for about 15% higher ownership, yet he’s only about 3% more likely to be optimal.

That’s because Noah Gragson has been lights out on the three most comparable tracks, pulling off finishes of sixth, sixth, and ninth at Las Vegas, Dover, and Kansas respectively. Gragson’s practice times might not look great, but if we measure his tire falloff on the long run, we see just how minimal it was. He has an incredibly good long-run car at a track where long runs have been common. He also took the brand new Rette Jones Racing team to a fifth-place finish at the Xfinity race here on Saturday. Gragson is my favorite DFS tournament play of any slate this year.

The pickings get pretty slim at $6k or lower. Thanks to DraftKings pricing the top drivers at only $10,500 instead of over $11,000, we can go with a bit more balanced approach this week, rendering the punt tier more as filler this week. The 10 drivers at $6k or less I have projected at just 75% total optimal, meaning we should average slightly less than one of these drivers per lineup.

Of that group, Corey LaJoie has the second-highest projected Perfect% and is projected to be sub-10% rostered, so he’d be my preference in tournaments of this tier, making a nice pivot off John Hunter Nemechek, who has a nearly identical Perfect% projection, but also a higher projected usage.