DraftKings NASCAR DFS Picks for Bristol: Fantasy NASCAR Strategy and Picks for the Food City 500

The NASCAR Cup Series makes its way to its second consecutive short track, this time the high banks of Bristol Motor Speedway for this weekend’s Food City 500.

While both Martinsville and Bristol are short tracks, they are by no means comparable, as Martinsville is flat-banked and slow, where drivers rely on mechanical grip and braking technique. Bristol, however, is steeply banked and concrete all around, so drivers rely more on carrying momentum through the turns at a higher speed.

That makes Bristol quite unique, and my model’s feature selection algorithm pulled in a heavy dose of track history.

With that said, we did have practice, so you will want to check out my practice FLAGS data for Bristol, although keep in mind practice isn’t quite as predictive at Bristol as it is at most tracks, so take it with a grain of salt this week.

Additionally, with 500 laps scheduled, you’ll absolutely need at least one dominator, but more typically 2-3 dominators is the play.

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 Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Food City 500 Cash Game Picks

Ryan Blaney ($10,000): Blaney starts on pole and is the No. 1 driver in practice FLAGS, so he’s a lock for cash-game lineups.

It’s likely Blaney will dominate the early proceedings, if not the whole thing like Hamlin did last week in the exact same situation.

Alex Bowman or not?: This is purely up to you, but if you believe he won’t suffer a relapse of his vertigo symptoms that forced him out of the car at COTA and the subsequent four races, then he’s a slam dunk in cash games based off my projections.

But if you are worried, I certainly wouldn’t blame you, especially since Bristol might be the worst possible track for someone to return from vertigo, as it’s a virtual high-speed merry go round for 500 laps.

John Hunter Nemechek ($6000): JHN has been fantastic at Bristol in his Cup career, and he was perfectly fine in practice, especially knowing he starts 31st.

He ranked 14th in speed-based FLAGS in practice, which, if he matched that in the race, would be a huge amount of place-differential points at a nice, cheap salary.

Food City 500 Tournament Picks

Dominators: Like I said, we’ll want 1-3 dominators per lineup, usually two or three. Here are my top dominators by likelihood of dominating:

1. Ryan Blaney

   (gap here to show tier)

2. Kyle Larson
3. Ty Gibbs
4. Tyler Reddick
5. Chase Briscoe
6. Denny Hamlin
7. Christopher Bell

I’ve intentionally left some gaps to show tier levels. Blaney is the obvious one as I talked about, and Larson is a clear second option given his track history of dominance, second-ranked practice FLAGS, and a top-eight starting spot.

Then there’s the Reddick, Briscoe, Gibbs tier, which is the second, third, and fifth-place starters, all of whom should be strong here. I make Gibbs the best of the trio given his recent dominance here and practice FLAGS advantage over the other two. That said, Reddick and Briscoe show value in the Perfect% vs. projected Own% department.

The next tier consists of the big-name past winners here in Hamlin and Bell, but they are lower down since they start 11th and 14th respectively.

After that, we come to another tournament play I love.

Carson Hocevar ($8000): I actually could have listed him under dominators, but since he starts 10th and is cheaper, he doesn’t even have to count against your dominator total.

Hocevar was a top-five car in FLAGS, was fourth and seventh in the two races last year in FLAGS, and is coming off a top-four finish at Darlington, which has some similarities in the banking department to Bristol.

Alex Bowman ($7000): If you aren’t playing him in cash, you absolutely need him in tournaments because we’re playing upside here, and if Bowman goes all 500 laps, then his upside is among the highest relative to salary in the field.

AJ Allmendinger ($6600): Allmendinger is probably too low in my model’s projected ownership, but I still like him even if he were closer to 15% rostered.

The concrete master was a top-three car in his group in FLAGS and ranked well in long-run speed and consistency as well.

Connor Zilisch ($6900): Zilisch gets a mention here because the model is particularly low on him, so I wanted to point him out as me going against the model.

Not every situation can be captured perfectly, and in the case of an elite rookie who’s had early-season struggles, and where practice tends to matter less than most tracks, it didn’t really push Zilisch up.

But Zilisch was absolutely among the faster cars in the first group during the latter half of his 40-lap run, where he ultimately pulled it in early and was happy with his car’s performance.

In the graph above, you can see that after about 20 laps, Zilisch’s lap times really flatten out and he’s way ahead of his practice group’s median lap time.

For the optimizer, I’d suggest you bump up Zilisch’s projections manually. I’d want at least 15% Zilisch, if not more.

Pictured: Ryan Blaney
Photo credit: Mady Mertens