DraftKings NASCAR DFS Picks for Bristol: Fantasy NASCAR Strategy and Picks for the Bass Pro Shops Night Race

Bristol Motor Speedway hosts the last Crown Jewel event of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season and fittingly also kicks off the Fantasy Racing World Championship series of races.

I have one entry in the FRWC, so if you’d like to follow along and sweat with me during the race, this will eventually be the link for the contest once lineups lock.

Bristol is a half-mile, steeply banked concrete track and is one of the most uniuqe tracks on the circuit. My model places around 82.5% weight just on Bristol track history, so that’s what we’ll be leaning on as we build lineups.

Notably, practice and qualifying were rained out, so the starting lineup was set by NASCAR’s lineup metric. Of course, there’s also no practice FLAGS with no practice data.

With 500 laps scheduled, dominators will be massive, and we’ll want 1-3 per lineup, usually two or three.

As always, be sure to 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 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 Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol.

Bass Pro Shops Night Race Cash Game Picks

Kyle Larson ($11,500): Larson is a massive $11,500 this week, but rightly so as he as been the dominant driver at Bristol in the Next Gen era, especially on races that did not have tire cording.

Larson ranks first in Bristol race FLAGS in the three non-cording races since 2024 when the new Ford and Toyota bodies were introduced, including No. 1 in FLAGS in the first race there this year.

By virtue of his win last week at Gateway, he ranks first in NASCAR’s lineup metric, so he starts on the pole.

Expect him to lead plenty.

Josh Berry ($6900): Josh Berry ranks 11th in FLAGS at Bristol’s non-cording races since 2024 if we only count his races for Wood Brothers racing, his current team. And if we do a weighted average by recency, he actually jumps to ninth.

By firing off 31st, he’s got a ton of place differential potential if he can match that race speed he’s had in his previous two non-cording starts here.

Bass Pro Shops Night Race Tournament Picks

Dominators: Here are my top dominators by likelihood of dominating:

1. Kyle Larson
   
   (gap to show tier)
   
2. Denny Hamlin
3. Christopher Bell
4. Ty Gibbs
5. Ryan Blaney

These are the only five drivers who project for an average of 15+ dominator points. That doesn’t mean other drivers aren’t capable of 15 or more, but these are the five most likely by my model to hit that number.

Carson Hocevar ($7900): Next on the dominator list would be Carson Hocevar, who projects for 13.85 dominator points on average. But that’s on average. His ceiling is much higher, and a $7900 driver who produced something like 20 or more dominator points and just finishes around the top 10 would likely end up optimal.

Hocevar ranks third in Bristol race FLAGS in the non-cording races over the last two years, behind only Larson and Blaney, and just ahead of Hamlin.

By starting fifth, he’s a massive risk, but that also puts him close to the front where his dominator upside could be realized.

Roster Construction: Obviously, Larson lineups will tend to lead toward certain builds. I’ve run some correlations with Larson and other top drivers to see who he has the most negative correlation with from my simulations:

1. Larson/Hamlin -0.27
2. Larson/Bell -0.19
3. Larson/Gibbs -0.17
4. Larson/Blaney -0.16
5. Larson/Briscoe -0.11

If you’re building lineups, Larson and Hamlin have the most negative correlation, so pairing them together reduces your upside but doesn’t hurt your floor (if Larson isn’t leading, it’s most likely because racers like Hamlin, Bell, or Gibbs are leading).

That makes me really land on Larson and Bell and Larson and Briscoe lineups, because Bell doesn’t have as much negative correlation as Hamlin, saves some salary, and still has the third highest dominator potential.

Briscoe is for similar reasons. He has dominator potential despite starting 26th, and if he gets to the lead, it’s likely because Larson already led a bunch, and he comes with more salary relief than Gibbs.

If you’re going Larson, you’re going to have less of the Logano through Keselowski price range and more of the Hocevar to Berry range, and some punts, but you can get slightly more balanced by going Bell and/or Briscoe (proj. 53% owned total, $20,600) than Hamlin and/or Gibbs, who should be the more popular options (proj 60.6% owned total, $21,400 total salary).

If you’re not going Larson, you have a lot more balanced options, but beware because my model has Larson optimal around 70% of the time!

Pictured: Kyle Larson
Photo credit: Eric Canha, Imagn