July 13, 2025
Austin Cindric of Team Penske will start 24th for Sunday's Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway. Cindric was the slowest qualifier of the three Penske entries in this week's race at Sonoma. In three previous races at the site, Cindric has one top-5 finish, but also collected positive Place Differential in all of his Cup appearances there. In 19 races completed this season, Cindric has 11 top-20 finishes and an average finish of 20.0. The No. 2 Ford driver also gained positive PD in all three road course events this season. In practice for Sunday's race, Cindric ranked 32nd in overall lap averages and did not run five consecutive lap averages. Cindric is a driver who historically is solid at road courses, but considering his slow practice speeds, he is not one of the first drivers that fantasy players should gravitate towards for lineup construction this week. Cindric's upside from his starting position does still make him playable in all formats, but he is not a top recommendation.
--Sean Engel - RotoBallerSource: DriverAverages.com
July 13, 2025
Spire Motorsports driver Carson Hocevar is starting in the 23rd position for this week's Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway. Hocevar's starting position is the lowest of his Cup career to date at the California road course. In his only previous Sonoma start last season, Hocevar started 13th and finished 17th, losing a few positions, but still placing in the top 20. With 19 races completed so far in 2025, Hocevar has eight top-20 finishes, with an average finish of 23.5. However, only one of those came at a road course (13th at COTA) this season. In practice for this week's race, Hocevar ranked 30th in overall lap averages and 31st in five consecutive lap averages, while also spinning in practice. Hocevar's practice speeds do not inspire confidence, while his road course results this season have been mixed. With such mixed results and speeds, Hocevar is best recommended for tournaments, despite having enough upside to be playable in cash formats as well.
--Sean Engel - RotoBallerSource: DriverAverages.com
July 13, 2025
John Hunter Nemechek of Legacy Motor Club will start 18th for Sunday's Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway. Nemechek's starting position is a new career-best in the Cup Series at Sonoma. In his only Cup start at Sonoma in 2024, Nemechek started 37th, gained positive Place Differential, and finished 29th. After 19 races so far in 2025, Nemechek has nine top-20 finishes and an average finish of 18.9, highlighted by two top-15 finishes in his last two road course events. Notably, Nemechek has captured positive PD in all three road course events this season. In practice, Nemechek ranked 21st in overall lap averages and 12th in five and 10 consecutive lap averages. Despite offering lower upside than most around his salary range of $6,200 on DraftKings, Nemechek has quietly been one of the better performers at road courses in terms of scoring PD this season. Nemechek is a sneaky driver who should be considered in all formats, but especially in tournaments.
--Sean Engel - RotoBallerSource: DriverAverages.com
July 13, 2025
With two road courses and Daytona left in the seven races before the NASCAR playoffs begin, A.J. Allmendinger has not been totally eliminated from playoff contention as he is only 43 points behind Bubba Wallace for the final playoff transfer spot and he is much better on road courses than the two drivers he is chasing, Wallace and Ryan Preece. He might view himself as being in a must-win scenario and focusing on getting stage points, but he declined to do that at the Chicago Street Course last week and still finished fifth. Since it seems more likely he'll repeat the latter strategy, he probably won't lead many laps and he'll probably be stuck behind Shane van Gisbergen all day. He's still worth starting since he's likelier to overachieve his DFS salary expectations more than most drivers, particularly in a race where few road course stars qualified poorly, but he probably isn't quite the best option.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
July 13, 2025
After having not won a race since his second straight fluky Daytona 500 win and back-to-back DNFs in the last two races which nearly cost him the points lead, William Byron is going to be a little undervalued for DFS play at Sunday's Sonoma race, particularly since he is starting third and is likely to lose a lot of place-differential points and because he is the fourth-most expensive driver at $10,000. Furthermore, Byron has only earned a single top-10 finish here in 2022, which was only a ninth-place finish. Although the track might not favor him, the track type does, as Byron had three straight top-10 finishes, including a third at the Charlotte roval and a second at Austin, so it seems inevitable that he'll run well at Sonoma soon. However, given his current record to date, he's probably not quite worth starting for DFS as expensive as he is.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
July
13,
2025
The
hardest
Cup
Series
driver
to
evaluate,
Chase
Briscoe,
has
had
an
odd
season-long
trend
of
qualifying
and
finishing
well
but
running
worse
than
it
appears
on
the
surface.
That
can't
be
sustainable
forever,
and
indeed
Briscoe
had
an
atypical
race
read more...
July 13, 2025
After winning his first race at Sonoma three years ago, Daniel Suárez returns to the site of his triumph as a lame-duck driver as he has been released from Trackhouse Racing to presumably make room for Saturday's winner Connor Zilisch, who has not yet been formally announced. Although Suárez was a quite consistent qualifier here as he earned four top-10 finishes in qualifying in a row, not counting the canceled 2021 qualifying session, his win was something of an outlier that served as his only top-10 finish as well as the only race where he led a lap. Suárez has rarely seemed to have winning speed in any of his other Cup Series seasons unless his teams implemented wild strategies, and even that hasn't worked for him as much lately. Couple that with a career-worst starting position of 19th at Sonoma, and it's hard to envision him doing much.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
July 13, 2025
Although Kyle Busch no longer seems to have the oval speed he once did, he remains a strong contender on road courses and seemingly nowhere else of late. At Austin, he led the most laps and earned 42 of his 62 laps led this season and finished fifth. At Chicago last week, he recovered from a spin to finish fifth again; his two fifths are his only top five finishes this season. Busch starts 17th, much worse than he did in either of those races, but he does only have two finishes worse than 7th at Sonoma in his last nine starts. Coupling that with the fact that he surely needs to win to make the playoffs and Busch is likely a high-volatility option who would likely reap high dividends if he doesn't crash (like at Austin or Chicago) or underachieve wildly if he does (like at Mexico City). Essentially, whether he's a good DFS play or not pretty much comes down to whether he makes a mistake.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
July
13,
2025
Zane
Smith
of
Front
Row
Motorsports
will
start
12th
for
this
week's
Cup
Series
race
at
Sonoma
Raceway,
the
Toyota/Save
Mart
350.
Smith
outqualified
his
two
other
teammates
at
FRM,
as
he
is
the
only
driver
from
the
team
to
score
read more...
July 13, 2025
After coming out on top in his latest iteration of his feud with Bubba Wallace last week at Chicago, Alex Bowman advanced to Round 3 of the NASCAR In-Season Challenge, where he should be easily favored to advance since he has earned top-10 finishes in all three of his road/street-course starts this year while Dillon has never earned a top-10 finish on either track type in his career. Since Bowman starts ninth, there is a solid chance that he will lose positions from his starting spot, and he isn't the kind of driver who can usually go out and dominate a race. Since he's unlikely to score either place-differential or lap-leader points, he's not as valuable as he might seem on the surface, but considering he's been a consistent top-10 finisher on road courses lately, there's definitely a little value.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
July 13, 2025
Although Denny Hamlin doesn't have as strong a record at Sonoma as he does at many other tracks, he is probably going to be a little undervalued for DFS play because he has finished 31st, 36th, and 38th in his three races with the Next Gen car. However, that record is somewhat misleading with regard to how he has actually run as he wo the pole in 2023 and crashed after leading 33 laps then blew an engine on lap 3 last year, which suggests he will likely finish better than a statistical model based on recent performance would predict, particularly considering he had five consecutive top ten finishes at Sonoma before that, highlighted by a second-place finish where he arguably should've won before Tony Stewart ran him into the wall. Considering Joe Gibbs Racing's traditional road course speed and his 16th-place starting position, he should gain positions in the race, but maybe not enough to justify starting him.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
July 13, 2025
Brad Keselowski got himself in some hot water when he publicly lambasted NASCAR for suddenly embracing more road course races in the Jim France era, which helped precipitate a decline for a champion who was typically mediocre on road courses apart from a few years at Watkins Glen. At Sonoma, Keselowski tended to be much more mistake-prone. Although he's actually finished in the top 20 in his last nine Sonoma starts, his only finish better than 10th came in 2017 when he finished third while he was still good. Now that he is on the verge of not being good anymore, the chances of him pulling out a strong run seem much likely, especially when he is in a win-and-in scenario in a track where he's essentially certain not to win today. Although he'll probably gain a few spots from his 21st-place starting position, it won't be enough to make him a great DFS contender.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
July 13, 2025
Although Austin Dillon crashed last week in Chicago, he's well worth considering for DFS play this week at Sonoma, mainly because the Richard Childress Racing cars have been faster on road courses than they have on any other track type lately. Not only did Kyle Busch lead the most laps at Austin, he also recovered from a spin to finish fifth last week while his similarly-named teammate Austin Hill got his first top ten. Even Dillon himself earned a surprise top ten qualifying run at Chicago before his crash. Having qualified 33rd for today's Sonoma race, Dillon stands a really solid shot at earning Place Differential points at a track where he finished between 11th and 19th in seven of his ten starts including his best finish of 11th in his first Next Gen race in 2022. If you want to free up money to draft Shane van Gisbergen, Dillon would be a solid option for that purpose.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
July 13, 2025
Although Noah Gragson earned his first top-10 finish on a road course earlier this year at Austin, that is starting to look more and more like a fluke, as he is tending to run consistently mediocre everywhere. Case in point: His 32nd-place qualifying run at Sonoma on Saturday was far slower than his Front Row Motorsports teammate Zane Smith's 12th-place run, although he actually beat his other teammate Todd Gilliland in qualifying. Gragson missed the 2023 Sonoma race due to a concussion, so his only Cup Series start there came last year when he finished 26th for a Stewart-Haas Racing team that was arguably faster than FRM is now. There seem to be few reasons to justify starting him when there are better road-course drivers who are available for less money and are starting worse.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Referenec
July 13, 2025
Justin Haley's season has been somewhat disastrous thus far, but if he has any hope of turning around, it could happen at Sonoma. Last year, Corey LaJoie had one of his best runs of the year in the No. 7 car at Sonoma, where he finished 11th and had an average running position of 15th. However, Haley does not have as strong a record at Sonoma as LaJoie does, as he only finished in the top 20 once, earning a 12th-place finish in 2022 when he drove for Kaulig Racing. If Spire Motorsports' road-course cars are as fast as they seemed to be last year (especially at Watkins Glen), Haley may be an excellent dark-horse selection to earn place-differential points. The speed Michael McDowell showed last week at Chicago is certainly promising, but ultimately he's been running too poorly everywhere to be seriously considered for DFS play.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
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