DraftKings NASCAR DFS Picks for Kansas: Fantasy NASCAR Strategy and Picks for the AdventHealth 400

For the second week in a row, and the third time in the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, drivers head to a classic 1.5-mile track, this time at Kansas Speedway.

With recent data abundantly available thanks to the Las Vegas and Texas races, plus a telling practice session, I’m feeling good about which cars should have speed in the race.

I’ll heavily rely on my practice FLAGS data this week, in addition to track history and the aforementioned speed at Texas and Las Vegas in my analysis.

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 AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway.

AdventHealth 400 DraftKings 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.

Kyle Larson ($11,000): Larson was far and away the fastest car in my practice FLAGS metric, with only teammate William Byron and arguably Brad Keselowski (if we remove two questionable laps) in the same zip code.

Larson starts on the pole and should gobble up dominator points.

Brad Keselowski ($7000): After a slow start to the year, Keselowski finds himself at his lowest price point of the year while starting all the way back in 36th after having a tire issue in practice. But we can’t ignore how good his lap times were prior to the issue, with very little falloff in lap times until the problem.

In fact, Keselowski turned in on average a 97th-percentile lap time for the given lap number on tires over his last five laps prior to the tire issue.

Kyle Busch ($8300): Similar to Keselowski, I think we need to roster Kyle Busch in all formats quite a bit. Rowdy turned in a top-four FLAGS performance in practice, but he also starts in the back, rolling off 35th officially.

Despite three big-name drivers, Keselowski’s deflated price tag means we’re barely using above half the allotted salary on a trio of amazing plays this week.

AdventHealth 400 DraftKings DFS Tournament Picks

Strategy: There’s two schools of thought here.

1. The typical 2-3 dominator race: so you’d want a second (and maybe third) dominator. In that case, I’d rank them as: William Byron, Christopher Buescher and Tyler Reddick as my three next-most-likely dominators after Larson in that order, with other usual big names like Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney always capable of dominating too.
2. Larson just kicks everyone’s ass: In this case, you can stack your lineup with a bunch of mid-tier drivers, focusing on the combination of place differential + finishing-position points while adjusting that to salary. Drivers in this bucket include Busch, Keselowski, and Bubba Wallace as some of the top options along with the next driver I’ll talk about…

Alex Bowman ($7800): After crashing out with one of the best cars at Texas, through no fault of his own, Bowman qualified early in the order when conditions were less ideal and will start 21st. That puts him mid-pack, but his ninth-place practice FLAGS should have him moving forward once again.

In fact, his practice FLAGS was third quickest among the first practice group, ahead of guys like Chase Briscoe, Hamlin, and Wallace, all of whom start ahead of Bowman.

Jesse Love ($5500): The RCR cars have had plenty of speed this weekend, and that includes rookie Jesse Love, who is a full-time driver in the Xfinity Series making another spot start at the top level. Love’s FLAGS placement was 17th, and I looked through the individual laps and they all looked pretty legit.

That would jive with Busch (4th) and Austin Dillon’s (16th) FLAGS rankings in practice too.

Love starts 32nd in a car that could contend for a top 20. He should be one of the best punt options, but he’ll probably one of the higher rostered ones too.

Ty Dillon ($5100): The other highly rostered punt could be Ty Dillon, who’s coming off a 12th-place finish at Texas and has an average finish of 16.5 between Texas and Vegas.

The younger Dillon brother surprisingly ranked 11th in FLAGS, and he is in an ECR engine similar to the RCR cars of Busch, Love, and his brother at RCR.

Ty Dillon starts 29th, so there’s plenty of room to move forward.

AdventHealth 400 DraftKings DFS Paul Menard Pick of the Week

If you’re looking for a punt pivot off Love, Zane Smith ($5800) may be the guy. He starts 18th, which will keep his usage down, especially with Love and Ty Dillon grabbing some punt usage.

Smith ranked 15th in practice FLAGS, and in an interview after practice, he said he felt he had one of the best long-run cars.

All we need for Smith to be viable is to match his 15th-place FLAGS speed with a little positive finishing position variance. A 12th or better would likely get him into the optimal lineup, and certainly into plenty of cashable lines.