After winning five of the first nine races this season, Tyler Reddick hit a dry spell for about six months. However, he broke through last week with a shocking win at Phoenix Raceway. The surprise mostly comes from the fact that the short, flat tracks are not his strength. But he came through with a big performance, and the win has him within 60 points of Kyle Larson’s lead for the NASCAR Cup Series Championship.
With three races to go in the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, we head to Talladega Superspeedway for the final superspeedway race of the season. This race is high variance. It’ll be a huge opportunity for some drivers to either gain ground in the playoff standings, or possibly lose some spots as well depending on how this race plays out. For DFS and betting, we go the unconventional route and take some risks on longer shot plays.
We have all your coverage 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 NASCAR DFS picks and lineup building strategies on DraftKings and FanDuel as we get ready for the YellaWood 500!
Talladega Superspeedway
Talladega Superspeedway is the largest oval on the schedule and it’s the second pure superspeedway on the schedule alongside Daytona. Talladega is slightly longer but it’s also wider. One lap around this track measures in at 2.66 miles with 33 degrees(!) of banking in the turns and 16 degrees in the tri-oval portion along the front stretch. What’s even more impressive about this track is that these cars can comfortably run three-wide. And they can do that at Daytona as well. But Talladega is a superspeedway where, even in the draft, these cars could go four wide and that’s when things get dicey.
This race is among the final three races of the year. Kyle Larson currently holds a lead of five points over Christopher Bell. Larson has a chance to build on his lead and repeat as championship at Martinsville and Homestead. But superspeedways are arguably his worst track type. There’s massive variance and he historically has not finished well at Daytona and Talladega. So this is a great opportunity for other drivers to cut into his lead to level the playing field for the final two races.
As you can see from the latest trends table above that accumulates data from the last five races at Talladega, we’re likely not going to see a significant dominator. Nobody has led 50+ laps at this track since the start of the 2024 season. And rarely do we see multiple drivers collect double-digit fastest laps.
I’ll elaborate on this in the next section, but position differential is the name of the game. Over the last five races at this track, there have been at least a dozen drivers that gained 10+ spots in position differential. But to that point, there were also plenty of drivers that lost as much PD whether through a wreck or just falling back in the draft over the closing laps.
These races feature a ton of variance. There will be cautions for big wrecks. There will be big movers that come from the back and score well. Personally, I think betting this race is a bit more fun than playing DFS. You can find drivers with legitimate chances to win at 30-1 or longer. And even if you just want to bet some top 10 finishes, you can do so and find good value with some longshots going for +300 or longer.
NASCAR DraftKings and FanDuel Scoring Trends with DFS Strategy
The DraftKings and FanDuel Scoring Trends above are not surprising at all for seasoned NASCAR DFS players that have previous experience toying around with lineup construction for Daytona and Talladega. These tracks are where we don’t tend to prioritize dominator points. Laps led will be hard to gauge. Sure, the front row drivers could lead laps early. But these races have plenty of variance. If you wreck in this race, those dominator points are useless.
Fastest laps at superspeedways tend to be spread out as well. Some drivers may get to 10+ fastest laps, but just because certain drivers get clean air and have the lead, they probably aren’t logging fastest laps. The fastest cars tend to be deeper in the field taking advantage of the group’s momentum ahead of them.
So if we aren’t looking at dominator points, what are we looking for? Well, win equity certainly is nice but again, just having the winning driver doesn’t mean that you have the optimal lineup. Position differential is the name of the game. The drivers starting further back are safer because they offer a great floor. If they move up and finish well, then they provide a decent score. And if they wreck, then they aren’t killing your lineups with a ton of negative position differential.
For cash games, the strategy is simple. You should stack the back with drivers starting outside the top 25-30 starting spots. For tournaments you do need to take some risks on drivers starting further up. Team/Manufacturer stacks will be popular because they will pit together and draft together. Regardless of whether you’re playing cash games or tournaments, you want to leave significant money on the table. Do not use every dollar available to you.
At the end of the day, cash games are the safer route when playing NASCAR DFS contests for superspeedways. It’s a good week to get some exposure and have some skin in the game. But if you aren’t nailing the optimal lineup for tournaments, which takes a ton of luck, then you’re likely losing money.
NASCAR YellaWood 500 Top Tier DFS Picks
Ryan Blaney (Starting P27) – DraftKings: $11,000 | FanDuel: $14,000
Most NASCAR fans are aware that the Ford camp, specifically Team Penske, are very good at drafting and working their way to the front. The Penske cars, and the Wood Brothers affiliate ride, are all starting outside the top 15. Blaney and Austin Cindric start next to each other and will have no problem working together to move up and connect with Joey Logano. It doesn’t happen often, but a full-blown Penske stack is on the table. It normally isn’t something I entertain because they usually qualify much better.
Blaney is going to draw ownership because of his win equity and starting position. Blaney has won at Talladega three times in his career, most recently in the 2023 playoffs on his way to his Cup Series championship win. But that was the last time he finished well at this track. He’s wrecked in three of the last four races and he’s finished 20th or worse in five straight races here. That’s not to say he sucks but it’s the nature of this style of racing. But given the starting spot, he’s worth rostering in all contest formats.
Joey Logano (Starting P16) – DraftKings: $10,700 | FanDuel: $13,500
Everything we just said about Team Penske and their upside at these tracks holds true for Logano’s section, and it’ll be true for Austin Cindric when we get to him. Logano typically qualifies better than P16. He’s not as good of a cash game play as his teammates, but he’s worth rostering in GPP’s because of his upside.
And while we normally don’t target dominator points, Logano does have a knack for getting to the front in these races. In 35 career races at Talladega, he’s led 10+ laps on 16 occasions. In five of his last six races at this track, he’s led 19+ laps.
So we do get some win juice, but similar to Blaney there is the chance he wrecks. That’s the nature of the beast. Team Penske can lead a majority of the laps at this track. But that means nothing when stage three rolls around and the rest of the field gets aggressive to get to the front. And that’s when things tend to go south and chaos ensues.
Tyler Reddick (Starting P33) – DraftKings: $10,500 | FanDuel: $10,000
Reddick, similar to Blaney, is worth playing in all formats due to where he starts. Reddick won the Daytona 500 to kick the year off and the very next week he also won at Atlanta. And mind you, Reddick is also a previous winner at Talladega.
Since the start of the 2023 season, in seven races at Talladega, Reddick has an average finish of 12.7 with six of those finishes being 16th or better. If he finishes 16th on Sunday he’ll return almost 45 fantasy points but he also has top 10 upside and the Toyota’s are pretty good at drafting as well. They are a smaller group in this field of 40 cars, but Reddick is capable of winning this race and this is one of the few tracks on the schedule where a driver can start deep in the field and win the race.
Austin Cindric (Starting P28) – DraftKings: $9,200 | FanDuel: $13,000
Yes, we have all three Penske drivers mentioned in the top section for our NASCAR DFS picks. We largely look for drivers offering position differential and win equity. I feel like the four drivers in this section certainly offer that for our NASCAR DFS lineups.
Cindric is a previous Daytona 500 winner and he also has a win at Talladega on his resume. And similar to his teammates, Cindric has a knack for getting to the front at this track and leading laps. But similar to Logano and Blaney, despite the elite average running speed, the finishes aren’t always toward the top. In three of his last six races at Talladega, he’s finished eighth or better. In the other three races, he’s finished outside the top 20. But he is a great play on paper because of the starting spot and he’ll work with Blaney, Logano, and Josh Berry to get to the front as the race plays out.
NASCAR DFS Picks: Mid-Tier Drivers
Carson Hocevar (Starting P26) – DraftKings: $9,000 | FanDuel: $9,000
Hocevar is going to be a popular name for our NASCAR DFS picks and perhaps we tread carefully and monitor our exposure for tournaments. Hocevar will be trendy because like some of the drivers above, he’s won here before and he offers position differential. And like those drivers, he’ll draw heavy ownership.
But Hocevar’s made plenty of enemies, and while this isn’t the kind of track where drivers get revenge (because this is one of the most dangerous and violent tracks on the schedule), Hocevar did wreck at Daytona to end the regular season. If anyone is going to get revenge on Hocevar, next week is the place to do it.
He's finished sixth or better in each of the last three races at this track. He will be trendy coming off the win here earlier in the year that came with the phenomenal post-race celebration where he was hanging out of the car. But my gut is telling me to go slightly underweight on this play in tournaments.
Chase Elliott (Starting P18) – DraftKings: $8,900 | FanDuel: $11,000
This is more of a gut call, but I do like the potential for Elliott. He’s not a cash game play but firmly in play for tournaments whether you prefer playing him with other Chevrolet drivers or just on his own. But Elliott does offer some decent position differential and he’s shown in the past he can race well on superspeedways.
In five of his last nine races at Talladega, Elliott’s finished in the top seven and he’s a two-time winner at this track. He’s never won at Daytona, but he’s finished as the runner-up in the past and he’s a previous winner at the new configuration for Atlanta. He also knows this is his opportunity to really cut into Kyle Larson’s lead in the standings. So he has plenty of upside if he avoids the big wrecks but because of where he’s starting we should only be using him in tournament contests for our NASCAR DFS picks.
Bubba Wallace (Starting P25) – DraftKings: $8,300 | FanDuel: $12,000
Bubba’s mid-range price tag on DraftKings is a bit insane when you consider how good he is at superspeedways and drafting. At some point in this race, Bubba will get to the front and probably lead for a bit. If he’s still running in stage three, he has a shot to win. He got his first career win at this track despite the race being shortened due to heavy rain.
Bubba will either finish top 10 or wreck. That’s pretty much how his results here go. He’s finished fourth and ninth in the last two playoff races at this track and he’s finished as the runner-up three times at Daytona. Bubba knows how to navigate the draft and he knows how to lead in the draft so there’s great upside from the P25 starting spot.
NASCAR DFS Picks: Value Drivers
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (Starting P24) – DraftKings: $7,500 | FanDuel: $5,800
Since the start of the 2023 season, Stenhouse has the fifth-best average finish at Talladega (14.0) across a seven-race sample size. In 26 career races at this track, he’s won twice with 11 top 10 finishes. This past spring, he started P22 and finished sixth. He’s won twice at Daytona and he was the runner-up in this year’s Daytona 500.
Stenhouse is a bit of a fringe cash game play. He does start outside the top 20 but for cash games we prefer drivers starting outside the top 30. But he does have top five upside and may not be wildly owned in cash games.
Stenhouse, similar to Bubba Wallace, does have the ability as a value play to get to the front and lead laps. He’s led plenty throughout his career at this track. However, over the last seven races here he’s led just eight laps. But at this price tag, we don’t need dominator points. We just need a good finish. He’s not a playoff driver, but he does have some win equity.
Todd Gilliland (Starting P35) – DraftKings: $6,900 | FanDuel: $6,800
As good as Stenhouse has been at Talladega since the start of the 2023 season, Gilliland has arguably been better. Gilliland is tied with William Byron for the best average finish at Talladega (11.7) and Gilly offers a very nice amount of position differential for this race. If you’re a “stack the back” kind of DFS player for this kind of racing, Gilly is your guy.
In nine career Cup Series races at Talladega, Gilliland has finished top 12 on six occasions including a runner-up finish in this race a year ago where he led 11 laps after starting P27. Now I will advise that he strangely does not have the same success at Daytona. In a 10-race sample size at the World Center of Racing, Gilly has wrecked five times and failed to finish another race due to his engine overheating. He also doesn’t have a single top 10 result at Daytona.
I’m not going to let the Daytona results influence my level of exposure to Gilly too much, but I think it’s worth mentioning just to center our thought process and acknowledge that he isn’t invincible. But he has a very safe floor for this race and will be very popular.
Erik Jones (Starting P29) – DraftKings: $6,300 | FanDuel: $5,500
I’ll never not play Jones when we come to Talladega or Daytona. He’s a previous winner at Daytona from his time with Joe Gibbs Racing and he has eight top 10 finishes in his last 16 races at Talladega.
It would be in his best interest to hook up with Bubba Wallace and follow him through the field because luckily, John Hunter Nemechek and Tyler Reddick are starting outside the top 30. So those four Toyota drivers could, and should, link up to navigate the field. Jones is a good play for cash games and may only carry about 40-50% ownership in those contests which is actually decent for cash games at a superspeedway. It’s odd that we could consider that as leverage but he can move up and score very well as we’ve seen in the past.
Noah Gragson (Starting P39) – DraftKings: $5,400 | FanDuel: $4,000
Gragson will be trendy but it’s because he starts in the second-to-last row for our NASCAR DFS picks. And for what it’s worth, any value play starting outside the top 25 is firmly in play. I just can’t write everybody up and include all 40 drivers in the pool below. These races are so hard to predict but Gragson is one of the safest plays on the slate. For that reason he’ll carry very heavy ownership in cash games and he’ll likely be 30-40% owned in tournaments.
Gragson has an average finish of 18.5 over his last seven races at this track including top 10 results in the last three spring races at this track. Strangely enough, he hasn’t been as good in the fall playoff races at this track, but given where he starts this race, we can’t downgrade him simply it’s autumn.
He’s had some good runs at Daytona throughout his career and he does have his Front Row Motorsports teammates (Todd Gilliland and Zane Smith) starting outside the top 30 with him. If they can link up they can work together to move up in the draft. So a Front Row Motorsports stack is affordable and logical.
NASCAR DFS Optimizer & Lineups Picks This Week
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