August 3, 2025
Spire Motorsports driver Michael McDowell obtained a starting position of 13th after qualifying for this week's Iowa Corn 350 at Iowa Speedway. McDowell was the lowest-qualifying driver out of the three from Spire in this week's race, as he was the only one to gain a starting position outside of the top 10. In his only Cup Series start at Iowa last year, McDowell finished 23rd after starting in the 22nd position while driving for Front Row Motorsports. In 22 races in his first season with Spire Motorsports, McDowell has 12 top-20 finishes and an average finish of 19.3. In practice for this week's race, McDowell ranked 16th in overall lap averages, 24th in 10 consecutive lap averages, 18th in 15 consecutive lap averages, and 15th in 20 consecutive lap averages. McDowell is a decent overall DFS choice for this week's race as he does have equipment capable of maintaining a top-20 finish and leaves some cap flexibility. However, he does not offer as much upside as some other drivers who are lower in salary, meaning that he is still best suited as a tournament play, as fantasy players are likely to have low exposure to him this week.
--Sean Engel - RotoBallerSource: DriverAverages.com
August 3, 2025
Zane Smith of Front Row Motorsports qualified 23rd for the Iowa Corn 350 at Iowa Speedway. Smith is the only driver from FRM in order to qualify inside the top 25 in this week's race, and he set a new personal best qualifying position at Iowa. In his only prior race at the site in the Cup Series last season, Smith placed 31st. After 22 races completed this year, Smith has 12 top-20 finishes and an average finish of 20.3. Smith ranked 32nd in overall lap averages in practice while ranking 29th in 10 consecutive lap averages and 21st in 15 consecutive lap averages. Smith's starting position towards the middle of the pack makes him safer than some other DFS value options and playable in all formats, but his overall history at shorter tracks has been mixed. Smith is not the top driver to pick as a value to round out a lineup, as there are better options to recommend, but fantasy players could do worse than the driver of the No. 38 Ford.
--Sean Engel - RotoBallerSource: DriverAverages.com
August 3, 2025
Spire Motorsports driver Justin Haley will start in the 10th position for this week's Iowa Corn 350 at Iowa Speedway. This race will mark only the third time this season that Haley qualified inside the top 10 in a Cup Series race. In his only previous Cup start at Iowa last year, Haley started 19th and finished in 13th place, while gaining one stage point from placing 10th at the end of the second stage. Through 22 races this season, Haley has 10 top-20 finishes, with only one inside the top 10, and an average finish of 21.2. In practice, Haley ranked fourth in overall lap averages and ranked among the top 10 fastest in 10, 15, 20, and 25 consecutive lap averages. Despite Haley's practice speeds being fast, he does not offer a high number of Place Differential upside, and has been overall lackluster this season. Haley's low salary makes him a tournament value play at best, but he is a huge DFS risk for this week's race.
--Sean Engel - RotoBallerSource: DriverAverages.com
August 3, 2025
William Byron's season has kind of spiraled out of control over the summer after a dominant spring, but he still stands in striking distance of the regular season championship and he is definitely a top contender to win at Iowa today. Not only did he finish second in the inaugural Cup Series race there last year, he also won on both his Xfinity Series and then-Camping World Truck Series debuts at the track and is nearly always good here, while he's only starting behind Chase Briscoe, who typically backslides through the field after winning poles. Furthermore, Byron was also the fastest Chevrolet in practice where he was fourth, so he is almost certainly one of the most likely drivers to dominate the race especially when considering how much speed Hendrick had last year too. The only thing that could give one pause is honestly Byron's recent slump, but that probably won't matter today.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
August 3, 2025
After locking himself into the playoffs with last week's Brickyard 400 win, Wallace qualified 15th for today's Iowa race and was faster than both his teammates Tyler Reddick and Riley Herbst. Although Wallace is not typically faster than Reddick on most track types, short tracks are the exception since he definitely seems to outperform Reddick there and he's also seemingly been closer to him in speed than any previous year. That carried into practice where Wallace ranked second in speed and fifth in average speed (he was the fastest Toyota in the latter category). Starting where he is on a short track, he probably isn't one of the favorites to win, but he feels like a pretty safe bet for a top ten unless he overdrives and crashes, which he has done a lot this season. Now that the pressure is off after the Indianapolis win, he'll probably be likelier to finish better and is thereby a valid possibility for DFS play.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
August 3, 2025
Although he salvaged a not terrible qualifying run (14th) yesterday at Iowa, Joey Logano was more like Joey Slowgano in yesterday's practice, where he ranked next to last only above his fellow Joey Gase. While his teammates Austin Cindric and Ryan Blaney ranked second and third in average speed in practice, Logano only ranked 36th in this category as well, which is puzzling even by his recent standards, since he did finish sixth here last year (although even then he had nothing close to Blaney's speed). You'd think that Team Penske would put some emphasis on this track since setups from Iowa might carry over to Phoenix better than other tracks, but Logano's team seems to be ignoring the track even though the rest of the team is not. On paper, Logano makes sense for DFS play given Penske's apparent speed here, but his personal lack of speed will be a lot to overcome.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
August 3, 2025
Ross Chastain dominated yesterday's Xfinity Series race at Iowa after his teammate Connor Zilisch had a loose wheel, but he eventually lost the lead in the pits and only finished third. Nonetheless, he was the only NASCAR Cup Series star to enter the race yesterday, which could potentially help him with setups today although probably much less than it helped similar drivers in the past since the Xfinity and Cup Series cars are so dissimilar. As usual, Chastain qualified terribly and his 28th place starting position is worst of the Trackhouse cars, but I think you can still expect him to finish ahead of his teammates even though last year Daniel Suárez finished 9th while Chastain was only 11th. Sometimes Suárez is a faster short track driver than Chastain, but lately, Chastain has been faster everywhere so he's a great choice for DFS Place Differential points.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
August 3, 2025
If Brad Keselowski is going to win his way into the playoffs, Iowa might mark one of his best shots. Not only is his fifth-place starting position actually his best since last year's Iowa and Nashville races, he was fast in practice too. His eighth-place lap time in practice made him the fastest Ford and he was the fastest among all drivers in terms of average lap times. Keselowski's recent speed at Loudon and Richmond in fairly recent memory may carry over here, although his greatest success at Loudon came with the previous car. Even though Keselowski looked almost entirely washed up not long ago this season, he has consistently had top fifteen speed in recent weeks, even at Sonoma where he was historically dreadful. Normally you want to avoid drivers who qualified extremely well, but you probably don't want to in Keselowski's case since there's a chance he could dominate.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
August 3, 2025
Although the Hendrick Motorsports cars were generally no match for Ryan Blaney in last year's inaugural Iowa race, they were arguably the fastest other than Blaney as Kyle Larson led the second-most laps, William Byron and Chase Elliott finished second and third, and Alex Bowman drove from 33rd to 8th. This suggests Bowman might be likely to earn another top ten finish today since he is starting much closer to the front in 16th. Hendrick's speed has not seemed to go away as all four Hendrick drivers placed in the top ten in practice speeds and Bowman was actually the fastest Hendrick driver in terms of average lap times, where he ranks sixth. Although some of the drivers who are starting worse like Tyler Reddick, Chris Buescher, and Ross Chastain might be objectively better options, Bowman might be a safer option given Hendrick's consistent speed and the fact that he's a lot cheaper at $7,100.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
August 3, 2025
Short tracks have always been typically Austin Cindric's worst track type in the Cup Series and he only started 21st and finished 30th in last year's Iowa race. Nonetheless, he has been generally faster this year and he does have a knack for setting fast qualifying laps, as evidenced by yesterday's performance when he qualified fourth and was the fastest Ford. He did surprisingly rank second in average lap time in yesterday's practice also. However, he still seldom leads except on pit strategy, drafting tracks, or early in intermediate races, so he likely won't gain much in the way of either lap leader or fastest lap points and he's almost guaranteed to lose positions since he's never finished better than fourth on a short track. Although he might run and finish better than you think, the almost guaranteed loss of positions makes him a major DFS liability.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
August 3, 2025
While the Trackhouse Racing cars typically struggle on short tracks, that was not the case for Daniel Suárez at Iowa last week as he started 13th, finished 9th, and had his third-best driver rating of the year and tied for his best average running position. Suárez had also shown speed there in the Xfinity Series way back in 2015 and 2016 where he started on the front row in all four races and led 110 laps despite never finishing better than fourth. This makes him a solid choice for DFS play since he qualified 26th this time and will no doubt be desperately eager to prove he still belongs in the Cup Series after Trackhouse fired him. Although his teammate Shane van Gisbergen outqualified him, he did outqulify Ross Chastain and you can likely expect both Suárez and Chastain to move through the field to some extent, but Suárez's lack of speed this year should still give you some pause.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
August 3, 2025
Although it's hard to imagine the presumptive Rookie of the Year Shane van Gisbergen contending for an oval win anytime soon, the positive momentum from his back-to-back wins at Chicago and Sonoma may have energized the No. 88 team as SVG has now outqualified both of his teammates Ross Chastain and Daniel Suárez for the fifth consecutive week, including three ovals. While bad luck early at Dover caused him to finish seven laps down, his run at Indianapolis last week was one of his best oval runs of the season. However, the Trackhouse Racing cars tend to lack short track speed of late and he's only starting 21st this time, so this week will likely prove to be a learning experience for him, especially as he crashed early in last year's Iowa Xfinity Series race although he did qualify second. The fact that he outqualified his teammates means he's less likely to gain positions and probably unsuitable for DFS play.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
August 3, 2025
John Hunter Nemechek started 34th and finished 26th at Iowa last year for a Legacy Motor Club team that has badly struggled on short tracks. He did win here once in the then-Camping World Truck Series in 2017 and led 35 laps in year's Xfinity Series race before a late race crash here, so he's not totally hapless here but he remains very mediocre in the Cup Series and this has not been one of his best tracks to date as he only qualified 29th on a track where he will very likely get lapped. Although he has better racecraft this year than last and has been much less crash-prone, it's hard to imagine him gaining enough positions to benefit significantly from Place Differential points, and he should probably be avoided especially when considering that regular contenders like Tyler Reddick, Chris Buescher, and Ross Chastain only barely qualified better.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
August 3, 2025
Erik Jones started, finished, and had an average running position of 32nd as well as his second-worst driver of the rating last year at Iowa, but he was still struggling to recover from his injury at Talladega, so it's hard to tell what that means for this year when he's been significantly faster although still generally nowhere near the lead. He qualified poorly as usual in 25th but he has also returned to his standard tendency to gain many positions in the race after poor starting positions, last week's crash at Indianapolis excepted. However, even uninjured, Jones has not seemed to have much speed on short tracks since Joe Gibbs Racing fired him and it's hard to see that changing today, even if he did win an Xfinity Series race once here in 2016. He will likely gain positions during the race, but probably not enough to be a viable DFS option.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
August 3, 2025
Noah Gragson started 23rd and finished 16th in last year's inaugural NASCAR Cup Series race at Iowa, but he was driving for Stewart-Haas Racing last year and is now driving for Front Row Motorsports, which has much slower cars. As a result, Gragson qualified significantly worse and will be starting 31st this time. In his two Xfinity Series races there in 2019 before the track was briefly removed from the schedule, he finished sixth and fourth so he's been fairly consistent without having great speed. Since Gragson did finish better than he started last year and qualified even worse this year, he should likely earn some Place Differential points, but probably not enough to compensate for his likely mediocre finish.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
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