April 27, 2025
Austin Dillon of Richard Childress Racing starts in the fifth position for the Jack Link's 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. It will mark the fifth time in his Cup Series career that Dillon will start inside the top five at the site, with his last top-5 start coming from last year's April race. In 23 starts at Talladega, Dillon has six top-10 finishes, including his last appearance at the Alabama track in October 2024, where he went on to place eighth. In the first nine races this year, Dillon has five top-20 finishes with only one top-10 finish. Despite his team's reputation for bringing faster cars than most at drafting-based tracks, Dillon is not viable for DFS outside of tournament games. This is particularly due to his high starting position, which makes him one of the riskiest DFS options of the week and not a general recommendation.
--Sean Engel - RotoBallerSource: DriverAverages.com
April 27, 2025
Josh Berry of Wood Brothers Racing will start eighth for the Jack Link's 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. This starting position is a new career-best as well as his first top-10 starting spot for Berry at Talladega. In two past starts at the Alabama track, Berry has a best finish of 16th, which he obtained in this exact race one year ago. With nine races completed this season, Berry has one win and two top-10 finishes. As Berry will start in the eighth position, he has little upside from his starting position, making him a driver to avoid in DFS overall, especially as his history at drafting tracks has not been great.
--Sean Engel - RotoBallerSource: DriverAverages.com
April 27, 2025
Spire Motorsports driver Michael McDowell will start 14th for this week's race at Talladega Superspeedway, the Jack Link's 500. This will mark the fourth consecutive week this season where McDowell will start a race inside the top 15. In 28 prior Talladega races, McDowell has eight top-20 finishes, including four of the last eight Cup events at the site. In the first nine races of the 2025 season, McDowell has six top-20 finishes, including top-15s at Daytona and Talladega earlier in the year. McDowell's starting position does make him better suited for tournament lineups compared to most in his salary range due to his lower upside. However, McDowell is worth taking a shot due to his overall positive history at tracks that involve drafting.
--Sean Engel - RotoBallerSource: DriverAverages.com
April 27, 2025
Noah Gragson of Front Row Motorsports acquired a starting position of 27th after qualifying for the Jack Link's 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. This will mark the fourth time in his Cup career that he will start better than 30th at Talladega. In five previous Cup starts at the Alabama track, Gragson has three top-20 finishes while scoring positive Place Differential twice. Through nine races this season, Gragson has three top-20 finishes, an average finish of 23.8, and five finishes with positive PD. Gragson has high upside based on his starting position for this week's race, and although he displayed mixed results in Cup at the site, his new team, Front Row Motorsports, usually brings fast cars to Talladega. Gragson is playable in all formats, but is especially recommended in tournament games as he will carry lower rostership due to his mixed Talladega history.
--Sean Engel - RotoBallerSource: DriverAverages.com
April 27, 2025
While Denny Hamlin was arguably the best drafting track driver in the Gen-6 era of NASCAR, he hasn't seemed to have the same speed with the Next Gen chassis on these tracks. Since 2020, he's had an odd streak where he has finished outside the top ten in each of the last four spring races but finished inside the top ten in the last six fall races. However, it would be foolish to base any predictions on that likely random trend. Much like Alex Bowman and his teammate Chase Briscoe, Hamlin's value is likely limited because he qualified too well to earn many Place Differential points but too poorly to likely dominate, although admittedly he is more likely to dominant than Bowman or Briscoe. Since almost all the other top stars either qualified worse or are more likely to dominate (the Penske cars), there are too many better options to justify starting Hamlin.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
April 27, 2025
Kyle Larson has become something of an agent of chaos in NASCAR as he can either dominate a race or crash anywhere and no one is surprised by either. Whenever he crashes (as he did two days ago in Indy 500 practice) there's always a lot of social media hubbub mocking people who call him the greatest driver in the world. As a result, he probably enters this race undervalued, particularly because he qualified 25th and doesn't have many great finishes at Talladega even though he's had a lot of speed in the past. Although he probably won't be one of the race's dominators, Larson is always worth starting when he qualifies this poorly since he could theoretically win anywhere even though he hasn't at Talladega yet. The fact that so many fans are underrating him because they think he's bad due to his crashing makes him even more valuable.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
April 27, 2025
Although Kyle Busch seems to have faded from regular contention recently, he earned a somewhat surprising second-place qualifying run at Talladega, his best since Dover nearly one year ago. Talladega is the site of his penultimate win two years ago, but that race had more to do with the brilliant pit strategy he called himself than his race speed. Nonetheless, he's really good at leading at Talladega. You might not have noticed since he had a 15-year winless streak between his two wins there, but he has led a lap in all but four Talladega races since 2007. However, he has only led more than 12 laps once since 2010, which suggests he isn't likely to lead enough to justify using him for DFS play since he's starting so close to the front. However, since he is more likely to lead a lot than any of the other top starters except for the Penske cars, he isn't a terrible option either.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
April
27,
2025
Tyler
Reddick
is
last
year's
defending
winner
at
Talladega,
but
he
kind
of
backed
into
it
as
the
crash
that
eliminated
most
of
his
fellow
Toyotas
after
they
had
pitted
but
before
anyone
else
had
allowed
Reddick
to
take
the
lead
read more...
April 27, 2025
In a year when Trackhouse Racing has seemed to have lost a lot of speed, Daniel Suárez probably needs to place more emphasis on drafting tracks this year than in previous years since he is unlikely to have the speed to win anywhere else. He qualified 24th, highest of any of the three Trackhouse drivers. Considering some people think he might potentially be replaced by Connor Zilisch, who came one lap from winning yesterday's NASCAR Xfinity Series race, he might therefore be more motivated to perform in an attempt to lock himself into the playoffs like he did at Atlanta. Unfortunately, his record at Talladega is nowhere near as good as his record at Atlanta. He did earn three consecutive Talladega top tens relatively recently, but there are plenty of other drivers starting around or even behind Suárez who are better DFS options, starting with Suárez's teammate Ross Chastain.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
April 27, 2025
Even though Ryan Preece is surprisingly running as well as his lead RFK Racing teammate Chris Buescher this year and qualified fourth for today's race at Talladega, it's very risky to start him since he is almost certain to lose positions since he averages fewer than one top five of a year. Admittedly, his first top five did come here in 2019 and he seemed to have a little speed at this track type when he was at JTG-Daugherty Racing, he's rarely seemed to have speed on drafting tracks with the Next Gen chassis. Admittedly, RFK does seem to be faster than his previous team Stewart-Haas Racing, but perhaps not that much faster since Buescher and especially Preece's boss Brad Keselowski seem a lot slower than last year. Even though Preece is in a Ford, he's extremely unlikely to have the speed he needs to dominate, making him a terrible DFS option.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
April 27, 2025
In one of the year's biggest surprises to date, champion crew chief Rodney Childers announced last Wednesday that he had resigned as Justin Haley's crew chief. Perhaps this served as a distraction since Haley ended up qualifying 37th, slowest of all the full-time chartered teams. However, the crew chief doesn't really matter in forecasting races at Talladega and Haley likely has a lot of value since he is a good drafter in general and has earned two top tens in his last three Talladega starts, including a seventh last fall in his second start after returning to Spire Motorsports last year. It's obviously a crapshoot picking which drivers from the back will get good finishes at Talladega, but Haley is a good drafter and he's definitely capable of it in theory. The issue is whether Spire will have more speed than they did last year when they looked slow on this track type. Perhaps Carson Hocevar's second at Atlanta suggests they've turned a corner.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
April 27, 2025
In one of the more amusing anecdotes from qualifying, Chase Briscoe qualified 17th (slowest of the four Joe Gibbs Racing cars) after being penalized for a spoiler modification at the Daytona 500, where he had shocked everyone by winning the pole. Even though the penalty was rescinded, his inexplicable pole interrupting the perennial Ford qualifying dominance at the tracks likely had something to do with the infraction nonetheless, so his car won't likely be as fast this time in the race either. As with Alex Bowman, he's in a kind of no man's land where he qualified too well to gain many positions but too poorly to likely factor for the lead and earn lap leader points. Briscoe is probably even less valuable when considering he costs $300 more than Bowman.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
April 27, 2025
Alex Bowman qualified 18th at Talladega yesterday, which is consistent with his relatively bland performance there as this marks his seventh consecutive starting position outside the top ten after six consecutive top ten starts before that. While qualifying certainly doesn't matter there and he has had laps in every other race at Talladega, he isn't likely to be one of the dominant drivers in the race even with his recent uptick in speed and he is usually better at Daytona. He also qualified slightly too well to be a top contender for DFS teams when considering there are several better drivers who started behind him and are likely to finish ahead of him. All three of his Hendrick Motorsports teammates are likely better options.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
April 27, 2025
While Chris Buescher has seemed to maintain his consistency of recent seasons, he and RFK Racing in general have seemed to lose a lot of speed as he has not led a lap in the first nine races of 2025. Even though he qualified sixth at Talladega, a track which is traditionally conducive to a lot of lead changes, don't expect that trend to necessarily change today as he also qualified sixth for the Daytona 500 and never led that race. He qualified well enough that he should likely be avoided for DFS unless you think he is likely to dominate the race and earn a lot of lap leader points. Since he has a Ford and has won at Daytona, that's not impossible but the RFK Fords have never seemed to have as much speed as the Penske or even Front Row Motorsports Fords on drafting tracks of late and he has historically tended to be better at Daytona than Talladega.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
April 27, 2025
Ty Gibbs has slightly recovered from a disastrous start to the season with three consecutive good runs elevating him from 34th to 20th in the points standings. He qualified 10th ahead of all other Toyota drivers for today's Talladega race. However, that is not a good thing for DFS lineups because he qualified too well to gain many positions, so the primary value a top qualifier has is if they lead a lot of laps in the race, but even though he contended for the win in last year's second Atlanta race, he is unlikely to lead much in a race where the Fords are likely to dominate, nor is he likely to finish well given his recent history. He is one of the absolute worst choices for DFS lineups and must be avoided at all costs, even though he is available relatively cheaply at $7,000.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
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