Tyler Reddick may have needed overtime, but he went to victory lane for the FIFTH time this season and we’re only nine races in! It’s a phenomenal start and something we haven’t seen in the NextGen era. And wouldn’t you know it? We close out the month of April with a high variance race at Talladega Superspeedway, a track Reddick won at two years ago. Can he go to victory lane for the SIXTH time so early in the year?

Talladega tends to breed chaos and high variance. For DFS it’s very tricky. For betting, it’s a ton of fun. But myself and Ed Raus have all your coverage this weekend with the NASCAR DFS Playbook for DraftKings and FanDuel in addition to the NASCAR DFS Projections and the NASCAR DFS Ownership outlook. Let’s dive in and take a look at the top plays and lineup building strategies for the Jack Link’s 500!

 

 

 

Talladega Superspeedway

Talladega Superspeedway is always its own beast on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule. The Daytona 500 is recognized as the biggest race of the year, but Talladega is the biggest track on the schedule at 2.66 miles with 33 degrees(!) of banking in the turns.

This is going to be your typical “drafting” track as the field of drivers will run in one big group for Sunday’s race. And NASCAR is doing the fans a favor by extending the length of stage one to avoid slower speeds for fuel saving.

Talladega is always so tricky for DFS. I mention this almost every time we come to a superspeedway. But this style of racing is so much more fun for betting than it is for DFS. The DraftKings and FanDuel aspect requires nailing all five-or-six drivers in your lineup avoiding the carnage and finishing well. But there will be chaos, and you can lean into that by betting drivers with longer odds to win, grab a top five, or finish in the top 10.

The trends table above indicates we shouldn’t see any one particular driver heavily dominate this race. 64% of the top 10 finishers in the last five Dega races have started outside the top 12. And only half the laps led come from drivers starting inside the top 10. Yes, it’s still likely a driver from an elite team wins this race. However, we’re going to see some surprise drivers finish very well and you can leave so much money on the table when constructing lineups as we’ll detail below…

 

 

 

NASCAR DraftKings and FanDuel Scoring Trends

The tables above are none-too-surprising. Anytime we go to racing at Talladega or Daytona, we can expect chaos. In previous weeks, it’s beneficial to starting on the pole and having a path to dominator points. Well, those don’t really matter this week.

Position differential and the final result matter more. The fastest laps will be spread out among the field and laps led are going to be difficult to gauge. So all we have to rely on is the starting lineup, which we got Saturday because we no longer have practice sessions for superspeedways.

You’ll hear “stack the back” quite often throughout the weekend and you can see why. The highest scores tend to come from drivers starting deeper in the field. They provide the safest floor and the highest ceiling if they move up and score a good finish. So you’ll be able to leave plenty of salary on the table for this race and you can build unique lineups with upside that way.

Qualifying was rained out Saturday morning and there are no practice sessions for superspeedway races. So we’re flying a bit blind and simply going into this race building sound lineups for superspeedways.

 

 

 

NASCAR Jack Link’s 500 Top Tier DFS Picks

Ryan Blaney (Starting P15) – DraftKings: $10,200 | FanDuel: $14,000

We’re kicking off the NASCAR DFS Playbook with two of the best “drafters” in the field and they’re both offering decent position differential and win equity. As of Saturday morning, Blaney and Logano were both listed as +1000 favorites to win this race.

2024 and 2025 were awful for Blaney. His best finish in those four races was just a top 20 result. In fact, he’s wrecked in two of the last four races as well. But we know Blaney can win here. He’s done so three times in his career with a pair of runner-up finishes as well.

Blaney will still draw a lot of ownership because of the win equity and where he starts. He’s not starting high enough to remove him from our driver pool as we typically tend to be underweight on drivers starting inside the top 10.

Joey Logano (Starting P25) – DraftKings: $10,000 | FanDuel: $13,500

Joey Logano is a great plate racer. He’s won on superspeedways and we know he’s on the best team at running up front in the draft. Now as good as Logano is during the race, he’s not quite as good at finishing. This tweet from Daniel Céspedes on Twitter sums up Logano’s superspeedway performances.

He’s qualified well, he has the second-best average running position, and he leads plenty of laps. But he struggles with finishing well because when he’s running up front late in the game, he tends to get wrecked while others make moves for the lead. It’s just an unfortunate part of this style of racing.

But we do get win equity here. Logano is listed as a 10-1 favorite to win this race because the sportsbooks know there’s win equity with Logano. The question is now do we take the risk in DFS? Absolutely just based on where he’s starting.

William Byron (Starting P7) – DraftKings: $9,800 | FanDuel: $11,500

Byron’s obviously a very good drafter. And he’s not having a great start to the 2026 season by any means. Byron’s a two-time Daytona 500 winner and he’s won three times overall at the World Center of Racing. And while I don’t like being too heavy on drivers starting in the top 10 for these races, Byron’s one of the few drivers starting up front I’ll gamble on.

Byron is one of the rare drivers you can feel pretty good about potentially leading laps in a race like this. He led 10 laps in this race a year ago and finished third. In the first NextGen race at Talladega he led 38 laps and finished 15th.

At the end of the day we get some win juice with Byron and even if he doesn’t win, he’s more than capable of navigating his way into the top five to score well.

Tyler Reddick is probably going to be a fade for me this week. He’s going to be the talk of the town as he won the Daytona 500 and then won at Atlanta… And then he won on three other tracks as well. But based on the scoring tables above, the polesitter doesn’t score well here. Yes, he’s a previous winner at Talladega but given how trendy he is for this race, and the fact that he’s on the pole, I want to lay off playing Reddick this week.

 

 

 

NASCAR DFS Picks: Mid-Tier Drivers

Bubba Wallace (Starting P4) – DraftKings: $8,800 | FanDuel: $13,000

Bubba is notoriously regarded as one of the best pure “drafters” in the series. He is a previous Talladega winner even if the race was shortened due to rain way back in 2021. But more recently he’s finished top 10 in each of the last three Dega races.

Even in this year’s Daytona 500, Bubba started P27 and finished 10th with 40 laps led and he’s finished as the runner-up in three different races at Daytona. The one knock on Bubba and the Toyota camp is that they are in the minority for this field. There will be 40 cars and the Toyota’s represent about a quarter of the entry list. So there are fewer cars to work with, and when they pit together, they have to come off pit road together and in sync. The more cars in the draft, the faster you’ll go. But oftentimes we see the Toyota’s get passed easily fresh off their pit stops.

So it’ll cost them track position mid-race but it’s not the end all be all. They can obviously still move up and finish well. Denny Hamlin’s won the Daytona 500 three times. Chase Briscoe won at Talladega last fall. So the Toyota’s have some win juice and Bubba feels severely underpriced on DraftKings for a superspeedway race.

Kyle Busch (Starting P34) – DraftKings: $7,800 | FanDuel: $10,000

The price for Busch on FanDuel is surprising at an even $10,000. And Busch is having another terrible year which has led to some widely discussed comments from Denny Hamlin and Busch himself. But if we’re going to gamble on Busch at any track type it would be Talladega.

Busch has qualified very well recently at superspeedways. He started in the first two rows for each of the last four Talladega races and he was even on the pole for the Daytona 500. So right off the bat, we’re throwing him out of the player pool because of his qualifying efforts.

However, with qualifying rained out for Sunday’s race we have the lineup set by the metric and Busch is starting deep in the field because of his poor finishes lately. Busch won this race three years ago in his first season with RCR, but he hasn’t finished in the top 15 since. But for this race he’s going to start pretty far back and that puts him in play instantly for the NASCAR DFS Playbook.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (Starting P22) – DraftKings: $7,500 | FanDuel: $5,500

Stenhouse is a notoriously good drafter and won the fall 2024 race at Talladega after starting P32. And in this race two years ago he finished 4th. Overall he’s a two-time winner at Talladega and he’s a two-time winner at Daytona including the 2023 Daytona 500.

Stenhouse’s price tag isn’t prohibitive. He should probably be priced in the $8K range and he’s going off a +2500 to win this race. But you have to understand the risk you’re taking with Stenhouse for this race. He’s nicknamed “Wrecky” for a reason and he’ll be aggressive late in the race to make a move to win, if he hasn’t wrecked himself already. But that sometimes starts “the big one” that ends his day along with a few others.

 

 

 

NASCAR DFS Picks: Value Drivers

Shane Van Gisbergen (Starting P33) – DraftKings: $6,600 | FanDuel: $4,500

SVG is widely regarded as the driver to beat on road courses, and we’re just a few weeks away from Watkins Glen. But from a DFS perspective, SVG has sometimes emerged as the best play of the slate because he qualifies poorly, so he starts deep in the field. And he does enough to avoid the big wrecks and he’s finished well albeit, in a small sample size.

In this race a year ago he started P36 but finished a lap down in 31st (29th after a couple disqualifications). But in the playoffs last October, he started P31 and finished 11th. Even this past February at Atlanta, he started P28 and finished 6th.

And again, we’re not going to see a ton of ownership go to SVG. He’s often emerged as the best play on the board as a PD option that doesn’t carry much ownership. 

Todd Gilliland (Starting P19) – DraftKings: $6,400 | FanDuel: $6,800

Gilliand’s had some impressive runs at Talladega in the Gen7 era. He was surprisingly the runner-up to Chase Briscoe in this race in the playoffs. In five of his last seven races at Dega, he’s finished inside the top 12.

Gilly didn’t have a good result in the Daytona 500, but we do know that he’s in a Ford and those aerodynamics of the car’s body make for great drafting and getting to the front. Overall, Gilly only trails William Byron in terms of average finish at Talladega (13.13) in the NextGen era.

Noah Gragson (Starting P29) – DraftKings: $5,900 | FanDuel: $4,800

Gragson is Gilliland’s teammate and obviously has the same Ford model that he’s driving in. Per Ryan with iFantasyRace, Gragson has the best driver rating over the last three spring Talladega races. Gragson also won a Talladega race in the old Xfinity Series and had just one finish outside the top 12 in eight races in the lower series.

In each of the last two spring races at the Cup level, Gragson has finished top five while gaining 20+ spots of positive position differential in each race. For that reason, I’m perfectly fine laying a longshot ticket on him to win (+5000) if he’s going to be in contention late in the race.

Cole Custer (Starting P27) – DraftKings: $5,500 | FanDuel: $3,500

We’ve got ourselves a Cole Custer sighting in a NASCAR Cup Series DFS Playbook! Custer performed very well in both Talladega races a year ago. In the playoffs he finished 5th and in this race last spring he finished 13th. But he did start P12 for both those races so he was likely well off our DFS radar at that time.

Custer wasn’t anything electric in Daytona to kick the year off. And truthfully, that may play to his strength. Custer’s been great in the lower series but has had his struggles in the Cup Series with one career win that came six years ago at a track NASCAR no longer goes to (Kentucky). But over the last five superspeedway races (Daytona and Talladega) he still carries the fourth-best average finish.

A race like Talladega is the perfect race to take some shots on a driver like Custer. He’s likely going to fly under the radar and anytime you can get leverage on a value play that maybe breaks the slate, you’re sittin’ pretty.

 

 

 

NASCAR DFS Optimizer & Lineups Picks This Week

Player Pool

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