Bristol Motor Speedway hosts the third and final race of the first round of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.
It’s must-win mode for Alex Bowman, Josh Berry, and likely even Shane van Gisbergen, while Austin Dillon is hoping to make up either 11 points on Austin Cindric, 19 on Ross Chastain, or 21 on Joey Logano to avoid being eliminated.
There are other scenarios as well, but these are the most plausible ways for Bowman, Berry, SVG, and Dillon to avoid elimination and make it to the Round of 12.
To do so, they need to navigate 500 laps at the half-mile, steeply-banked concrete bullring known as Bristol Motor Speedway.
Bristol produces fast laps in the neighborhood of 15-18 seconds, and you can go a lap down quickly if you aren’t fast early on and start near the rear of the field.
It’s also important to avoid major mistakes, like penalties or pit road mishaps that’ll set you back and make track position hard to regain.
But of course, a fast car cures all, which is why my FLAGS data is so important. NASCAR stops at 30 lap averages in practice, but some cars ran more than 80 laps in practice, and FLAGS is able to handle every driver’s every lap.
And as always, you can check out my NASCAR projections in the NASCAR Models on FantasyLabs, complete with floor, ceiling, median, and ownership projections.
These projections, along with Stephen Young’s from RotoGrinders, are available in our new 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 10,000 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 Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Bass Pro Shops Night Race DFS Core Picks
Instead of calling them cash-game picks, I’ll call them core picks, as these are picks I like in all formats. However, it’s important to note that very often core picks tend to go over-rostered in tournaments, so while they should still be used plenty, it may be prudent to sometimes go underweight on these drivers if you think they’ll be significantly over-rostered.
Ryan Blaney ($10,700): Blaney comes in at a discount from both Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin, but he was clearly top dog in practice, posting the No. 1 FLAGS rating after adjusting for practice groups. In fact, Blaney was more than seven full percentage points clear of second place Hamlin on a 0-100 scale.
Blaney starts second and is likely to overtake polesitter A.J. Allmendinger at some point in the first stint.
Chase Briscoe ($10,000): In cash formats, you’ll want the nice floor of Briscoe, who had a bad qualifying lap and starts 31st after practicing well, ranking fourth in FLAGS.
Bristol is the type of track that suits Briscoe well, with a fourth-place finish in the spring race here. That’s after four finishes of 13th or better in five starts prior to this year while he ran for the inferior Stewart-Haas Racing.
However, for a driver priced in the five figures, we’d likely want some dominator points, so his upside could be capped if he doesn’t find the front until deep into the race.
Ty Gibbs ($8700): It might be a lot of risk rolling Gibbs out in all formats, but I think he’ll be worth it with 500 laps in store and his ability to grab a boatload of fastest-lap and potentially even lap-led points at a price point $2000 less than Blaney.
Gibbs starts fourth, which isn’t ideal from a place-differential perspective, but he should have a top-five car based off his track history and practice FLAGS, so I’m willing to roll the dice.
There’s a big floor here if he can put up fastest laps and avoid major incident, but it’s certainly on the risky side for cash. Still, I think it’s a risk worth taking.
Oh, and absolutely use him in tournaments.
Bass Pro Shops Night Race DFS Tournament Picks
Ty Gibbs ($8700): See above. That’s how much I like his upside at his price point.
Dominators: You’ll need 2-3 dominators at Bristol. Here’s my dominator order in terms of likelihood:
Blaney
Hamlin
Gibbs
Larson
Christopher Bell
Allmendinger
However, it’s quite likely someone off this shortlist dominates at some point just based off strategy, since there tend to be quite a bit of yellow flags at Bristol that shake up the running order.
Carson Hocevar ($7500): Hocevar starts 12th,which gives some place-differential potential if he can keep his nose clean, because I believe he has a very fast car.
Hocevar ranked eighth in group-adjusted FLAGS, but I do wonder if the group adjustment was a little overblown given that there were so many laps.
Either way, Bristol is a fantastic track for the 22-year-old, who has two 11th-place finishes to his name in the Cup Series here.
He’s probably deserved a bit better too, but hasn’t quite had the luck to put together a top-10 run yet.
Yet.
The Punts: Bristol is a race where stars and scrubs works out often, because with 500 laps you can get a couple of big-name drivers to each lead 200-plus laps and then you’re wondering how to fit the rest of your roster together.
The other thing about Bristol is it has a high incident rate, close to around 25% in the Next Gen era.
That means cars that just avoid problems can often move up 5-10 spots just through attrition, let alone possibly more on speed and luck.
Here’s my favorite punts, listed in order:
Zane Smith ($5500, starts 24th, 9th in practice FLAGS)
Noah Gragson ($5800, 30th, 12th)
Riley Herbst ($5100, 29th, 5th)
Ty Dillon ($4800, 37th, 31st)
Pictured: Ty Gibbs
Photo credit: Joe Puetz, Imagn