The famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) plays host to this weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series race with one of the Crown Jewel events, the Brickyard 400.
Indy is a 2.5-mile large, flat oval, with a best comparable track of Pocono. However, IMS is also unique from Pocono in its shape and in the radius and banking of the turns.
That makes IMS already hard to handicap, given it’s so unique and the series races there only once per year and didn’t race there from 2021-2023.
Add in an abbreviated practice session where drivers were given two sets of tires, and it’s hard to accurately compare lap times from practice, making my practice FLAGS data about as useless as it gets on the season.
In addition, with only 160 laps scheduled, there’s only about 100 total dominator points to go around among 39 drivers. That means we’ll be focusing largely on the combination of place differential and finishing position for DFS.
We’ll still likely need 1-2 dominators, but if somehow the dominators end up somewhat falling back through the field before the end of the race, it’s possible to have a zero-dominator lineup end up as optimal.
As always, you can 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 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 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.
So, without further ado, here’s my strategy guide and NASCAR DFS picks for the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Brickyard 400 DFS Core Picks
Instead of calling them cash-game picks, I’ll call them core picks, as these are picks I like in all formats. However, it’s important to note that very often core picks tend to go over-rostered in tournaments, so while they should still be used plenty, it may be prudent to sometimes go underweight on these drivers if you think they’ll be significantly over-rostered.
Denny Hamlin ($11,000): Hamlin had arguably the best car in practice, and he was on an absolute monster lap that would have taken pole position, except, in his words, he over-sent it coming out of Turn 2 and wrecked the car on his qualifying lap.
That means, what is potentially the best car will start dead last in 39th place.
Since place differential is so huge, even Hamlin’s top-dollar price tag isn’t enough of a deterrent to keep him out of the core picks.
John H. Nemechek ($6200): Like Hamlin, JHN was one of the fastest cars in practice but made contact with the wall in qualifying.
Unlike Hamlin, Nemechek’s salary is absolutely not prohibitive.
Nemechek’s $6200 price tag is a gift for a driver who’s had plenty of speed at the intermediates this year, and especially at the large flat tracks, along with his teammate Erik Jones., both this year and last.
Nemechek is probably the best play on the slate since rostering him doesn’t restrict your budget as much as Hamlin, but he’ll also be massively rostered in tournaments. There could be a fade or underweight angle in top-heavy formats, but you almost have to play him in safer formats.
Ross Chastain ($8300): Chastain and Chase Elliott should both draw a lot of usage by starting 30th or worse, but given that I don’t think Elliott’s upside is much higher than Chastain’s and the latter starts three spots deeper in the field, I’ll take the $1700 salary break by dropping down from Elliott to Chastain.
I’m not super high on either driver’s upside, but both are winning Cup Series drivers, so at a track like Indy where strategy can come into play, both technically have top-five upside. So give me the salary relief as a core play with Chastain, but I’m probably looking to be equal or underweight on both in tournaments.
Updated on 12/5/25
Brickyard 400 DFS Tournament Picks
William Byron ($10,200): By win probability, Byron is No. 1 in my model to win the race after Hamlin’s qualifying crash and with Byron showing more speed in practice and qualifying than his teammate Kyle Larson.
As a result, Byron is also No. 1 in the most-likely dominator category, and by starting sixth, he even brings in a small bit of place-differential potential, should he not win but finishes near the front.
He’s a solid tournament play, but he is rightly capped in upside if he doesn’t lead at some point, so don’t go crazy here.
Ryan Preece ($7300): I feel like I recommend Preece almost weekly, but here I am again suggesting a driver in race-winning equipment (it remains to be seen if he’s a race-winning driver) who starts 23rd and was a top-half driver in practice FLAGS.
Given that the top-dollar guys may not need to be rostered so much with fewer dominator points available than normal, there’s a path here to a relatively balanced lineup where place differential and finishing position relative to salary is the optimal play.
Preece would fit that bill if he finishes where his equipment is capable of finishing.
Carson Hocevar ($7900): The driver who was No. 1 in my practice FLAGS metric definitely earns a spot in the tournament picks, especially at a sub-$8k price while starting inside the top 10.
His ownership won’t be through the roof, which may be a mistake for DFS players given his potential speed, especially after seeing him run at Pocono, where he certainly had a top-five car on speed but bungled the result.
Get Creative, but also be smart: There’s a lot of drivers with speed and/or track or similar track history that should give you a reason to play them. And with strategy very much in play at a 2.5-mile flat track where you can pit without losing a lap if you’re close enough to the leader, things are bound to get a bit shook up, meaning track position may play a bigger role than speed.
I’d suggest using my Perfect% and Ownership projections to find a few leverage spots, although this is one of the toughest races to handicap given the oddity of practice this week.
I hate saying it, but it is a solid week to reduce a bit of bankroll and just go with your gut instincts in addition to a few recommendations. This race is wide open, the strategy is wide open, and there is no shortage of possible roster constructions that could end up optimal.
Pictured: Chase Briscoe
Photo credit: Jef Richards, Imagn
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