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

NASCAR is back!

The traditional season-opening Daytona 500 kicks off the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season as 41 drivers look to go down in history as the 68th winner 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 90% of the finishing order is unpredictable long-term, 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 250,000 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 in 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.

Chris Buescher, William Byron, Austin Cindric, and Ross Chastain should be the chalk in this race. All four drivers start 36th or worse, making them the place-differential kings of this slate.

You’ll notice these are the only four drivers I project north of 30% usage, and they each also have a Perfect% projection essentially equal to or below their projected usage. That means, if you want to gain some leverage, I don’t mind playing these guys at or even slightly below their Perfect% numbers.

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 Cindric on 30% 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 Cindric in those 30% of lineups, which more than makes up for the lost leverage I have on Cindric should he end up optimal.

The biggest exception for me here is Buescher, who starts dead last in the 41-car field. I don’t mind going slightly over on him because there are still a ton of lineups that will cash that aren’t optimal, and with a huge floor and huge upside, he’ll actually end up on an even higher percentage of cashable lineups.

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

Daytona 500 DraftKings DFS Tournament Picks

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

Justin Allgaier ($6400): Gator, as he’s affectionately known, starts 40th and is in a Junior Motorsports (JRM) car, which is a Chevy affiliated with the biggest Chevy team out there, Hendrick Motorsports.

Allgaier is a consummate professional and a former champion of the now-named NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series who won’t make dumb mistakes with reckless pushes. Now, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be caught up in someone else’s wrongdoing, but I really like his chances of putting together a solid finish if he’s able to avoid other people’s mistakes.

Zane Smith ($5600): Smith 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.

Connor Zilisch ($7400): Zilisch is one of the most heralded rookies in the modern era of NASCAR, but people still likely won’t gravitate toward him enough as a rookie with a middle-to-upper-tier team.

Zilisch is smart and selectively aggressive, and he should have the respect of his peers even if he doesn’t necessarily have the trust levels built up with them yet in the draft.

But Zilisch can absolutely win this race, and in my opinion he should be in at least 25% of your lineups (his Perfect% is 24.8%) to get some leverage on the field.

Ty Dillon ($5000) is a staple of mine at drafting tracks, and I seem to bet him to finish as the Top Chevy at 40-1 almost every year.

With that kind of upside, starting 34th means a boatload of place-differential potential.

Noah Gragson ($5400) is a checkers-or-wreckers kind of driver at these superspeedways, but that makes him perfect for tournament upside.

Gragson nearly won at Talladega in 2023, leading the field on an overtime restart before he and Chastain wrecked while battling for the lead. Gragson also has three other top-five finishes in 14 starts at the big superspeedways of Talladega and Daytona.

Starting 25th isn’t quite far enough back where he’ll be heavily rostered, and I have his Perfect% at just north of 20%.

Note: while I like being overweight on all five 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

Cody Ware and Jimmie Johnson are two drivers I like to be slightly over their Perfect%, which will also get you plenty overweight on them relative to the field.

I don’t think you need to go crazy here, because their Perfect% is already 6-8% over their expected usage per my projections, but I do tend to like to tick up usage a touch more than Perfect% to get that leverage, knowing the field will be under on them.

Ware has moved from Ford to Chevy with his Rick Ware Racing (RWR) team, and they’ve joined a technical alliance with Richard Childress Racing (RCR), which of course includes polesitter Kyle Busch.

Ware has shown he has mid-20s speed both in the preseason exhibition and in qualifying for this race, and that’s good enough to have a shot at a strong finish, especially as north of 40% of the field tends to wipe itself out in this race.

Johnson was in this exact spot in my column last year and somehow parted the seas on the race-ending crash to claim a third-place finish, so we already know what the seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion is capable of, even in part-time duties after full-time retirement.

Daytona 500 DraftKings DFS Dominators

Daytona is not a track where 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 parentheses:

1. Joey Logano (3)
2. Kyle Busch (1)
3. Ryan Blaney (5)
4. Chase Briscoe (2)
5. Chase Elliott (4)
6. Austin Cindric (36)

Aside from Cindric, who starts 36th, the rest of the drivers start in the top five. However, I’m unlikely to have much exposure to the top five drivers, and I’d go in order from Logano down to Elliott in any expected exposure to them.

Aside from Cindric, you shouldn’t have more than one driver of this group in any single lineup.

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 2026 Daytona 500, the “Paul Menard pick of the week” is … drumroll please … Cole Custer ($5500).

Custer rolls off 23rd and has two straight top-five finishes at drafting tracks, and he nearly won this race last year, getting caught up in that race-ending wreck.

I’m not going bananas here, but at 10% projected usage or less, I’m fine going in the low teens here on Custer.

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 eliminates BJ McLeod and potentially Ware from consideration, and there’s enough top-tier drivers starting at the back that creating cash lines is a piece of cake, which unfortunately makes it hard to find an edge in cash games.

Pictured: Chris Buescher
Photo credit: Kylie Graham, Imagn