DraftKings NASCAR DFS Picks for Texas: Fantasy NASCAR Strategy and Picks for the Würth 400

The NASCAR Cup Series heads to Texas Motor Speedway for 267 laps on the 1.5-mile intermediate track.

Texas is the lowest-tire-wear intermediate track, and with passing quite difficult, track position and strategy will matter a lot.

Texas also gets a bit chaotic, with at least 11 cautions in each of the four races at the track in the Next Gen car.

That means there will be more uncertainty, and we shouldn’t be as confident in a driver even if they practiced well.

So while my Texas practice FLAGS is helpful, I won’t be relying on it quite as much as just leveraging ownership.

With Texas also potentially chaotic and a strategy race, dominators get a bit weird. The race in 2022 really only had one dominator. The next year had two, but one of them finished 31st, negating all the dominator points. The next year there were three drivers that produced north of 20 dominator points, but again, two of them had terrible finishes. And last year there was just one dominator.

In other words, plan for 1-3 dominators, but don’t be surprised if some of them sustain issues in such a chaotic race.

To see the top dominators, 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 Würth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway.

Würth 400 Cash Game Picks

Bubba Wallace ($8300): Wallace dealt with a loose race car in practice, and that ultimately resulted in a practice crash that caused enough damage to also miss qualifying.

As a result, Wallace starts 37th and is a cash-game lock as a driver that’s typically running around 12th or better in speed.

Austin Dillon ($6500): If Dillon’s teammate Kyle Busch is any indication, the RCR driver should have a decent chance of moving forward quite a bit.

Dillon starts dead last because of an engine failure in practice, so he never got to turn any laps at full song.

But Busch was a top-half car in practice and qualified fifth, so there is likely some solid speed in the RCR cars this weekend.

In such a chaotic race, place differential will matter, and Dillon has the opportunity for plenty of it.

William Byron ($9700): My model has Byron as the fifth-most likely driver to win the race, but he’s priced as the sixth-highest driver.

Also, of the top eight drivers in win probability, he’s the one that starts the farthest back in 15th, giving him the highest floor and most place-differential potential of the elite tier.

Byron was also quite fast in practice, setting the fastest five, 10, and 15-lap average times, and he ranked fourth in practice FLAGS.

Würth 400 Tournament Picks

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

1. Denny Hamlin
2. Carson Hocevar
3. Kyle Larson
4. Chris Buescher
5. Tyler Reddick
6. Christopher Bell

Ty Gibbs ($8700): Practice FLAGS isn’t a huge factor in my model this week, but we should absolutely give Ty Gibbs a look as the top dog in speed-based FLAGS in practice.

I posted on X that Gibbs’ lap averages will be misleading for those who look at those, and that should provide us some opportunity.

We can see that, after removing a few outlier laps for traffic, Gibbs actually looked incredible on the long run, even compared to William Byron who led the field in the shorter-lap averages.

Noah Gragson ($5700): Name a more iconic duo than me and my love for Noah Gragson in tournaments.

I’m going back to the well on Gragson even after the Kansas disaster, and a lot of it is ownership-driven.

I’m projecting Gragson for the second-highest leverage on the slate, and his poor practice FLAGS may scare people off.

But again, practice FLAGS has quite minimal impact at Texas in the Next Gen era, and I’m definitely just looking to leverage ownership here on a driver who was fast at this track last year before being taken out in an incident that was no fault of his own.

Würth 400 Paul Menard Pick of the Week

This week’s PMPOTW is Austin Cindric ($7200).

The Team Penske driver starts 13th and claims the highest leverage score of drivers in the $7k range. Cindric practiced sixth in speed-based FLAGS, showing the potential of his car this weekend.

His teammates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney finished this race first and third last year, and Cindric is going to look to capitalize on the chaos at a track where he only has one finish inside the top 20, which should keep his usage down.

I have Cindric’s Perfect% at 11.5%, and if you want some leverage on the field, I’m fine playing him up to around one out of every six lineups or so (16.7%) if you’re multi-entering, or as a leverage play in single entry or qualifier/top-heavy formats with limited entries.

Pictured: Bubba Wallace
Photo credit: Gary A. Vasquez, Imagn