NAS $1.5M America\u2019s Race [$500K to 1st] (Daytona)<\/a><\/p>\nTop DraftKings Picks for the 2026 Daytona 500<\/p>\n
1. Ryan Blaney ($9,700) \u2014 Do super-speedway stats matter? There is variance at Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta. Wrecks are common. Anyone can wreck and anyone can earn a top-5 finish. Can and do are different. Anyone can, but Blaney does. His 37% top-5 finish rate since 2019 is the best in the Cup Series.<\/p>\n
2. William Byron ($10,000) \u2014 Optimal DraftKings fantasy NASCAR lineups regularly feature super-speedway race winners. Byron has the best win rate (2019-2025). Not only has he won more than anyone else, he\u2019s won back-to-back Daytona 500s (2024 and 2025).<\/p>\n
3. Denny Hamlin ($9,500) \u2014 One of the greatest plate racers or super speedway racers has a storyline entering the 2026 season. There\u2019s a lot on his plate. At this stage in Hamlin\u2019s career, there should be a fall off, but that\u2019s not the case. There should be less motivation, but given the devastating months leading into this season, that\u2019s definitely not the case.<\/p>\n
4. Chase Elliott ($9,300) \u2014 Although NASCAR\u2019s most popular driver has not won at Daytona, he has won at Talladega and Atlanta. His average super-speedway finish is 14.8. That might not sound great, but this is the second-best in this volatile style of racing.<\/p>\n
5. Kyle Larson ($9,800) \u2014 The script is the same. Larson is Alexander the Great. He\u2019s conquered every discipline of racing. There is one last accomplishment. Yung Money has won an O\u2019Reilly Series (formerly the Xfinity Series) super speedway race, but he\u2019s yet to win one in the Cup Series. It shouldn\u2019t matter, but it does.<\/p>\n
6. Alex Bowman ($8,500) \u2014 Quietly, Bowman has become one of the best super-speedway drivers in the Cup Series. This shouldn\u2019t be a surprise. No one ever notices Bowman, but they should because he\u2019s driving a Hendrick Chevy. He doesn\u2019t have the wins but his 41% top-10 finish rate is one of the best in the series.<\/p>\n
7. Bubba Wallace ($9,100) \u2014 In the last 12 super-speedway races (2024-2025), Wallace has six top-10 finishes. Most drivers do not finish half of their races at Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta. Wallace finishes and finishes inside the top 10.<\/p>\n
8. Chris Buescher ($8,400) \u2014 Technically, John Hunter Nemechek averages a better finish at Daytona than Buescher, but JHN\u2019s sample size is small (six races). Buescher has the best average finish at Daytona and has a Daytona summer race win.<\/p>\n
9. Christopher Bell ($8,200) \u2014 Similar to fellow dirt racing legend Kyle Larson, Bell has not won a Cup Series race at Daytona or Talladega. Bell did win the 2025 Atlanta super-speedway race. There are plenty of Toyotas on the track to team up with. Bell might be the top pick, but at Daytona, there\u2019s little difference between the best and the rest.<\/p>\n
10. Joey Logano ($9,400) \u2014 Team Penske has a storied history at super speedways. Logano and Brad Keselowski were a dominant force. It seems the torch has been passed to Blaney. Even Austin Cindric has visited victory lane more recently than Logano. Has Logano\u2019s luck run out? Never bet against Logano.<\/p>\n
11. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. ($7,200) \u2014 Everyone\u2019s favorite plate racer has to be on the radar. He\u2019s the class DFS NASCAR GPP pick at Daytona. It\u2019s all or nothing. Most of the time it\u2019s nothing. Stenhouse has one top-10 finish in the last 14 Daytona races \u2014 his 2023 Daytona 500 win.<\/p>\n
12. Erik Jones ($7,300) \u2014 Legacy Motor Club was a disappointment in 2025. The Daytona 500 is a great opportunity to make a statement. Jones\u2019 super-speedway skills did not diminish when Joe Gibbs Racing showed him the door. For DFS, he\u2019s in a better position with a smaller team. Points don\u2019t matter. Jones is gunning for the win.<\/p>\n
13. John H. Nemechek ($6,000) \u2014 What is to be done with JHN? If stats matter, then his average finish of 11th is the best in the series. The catch is that he\u2019s only raced at Daytona six times. If track history is barely acceptable, then why should the number of races matter? How many races are necessary?<\/p>\n
14. Daniel Suarez ($6,700) \u2014 It\u2019s been a trip. Suarez won the Xfinity Series and was rushed into the Cup Series when Carl Edwards abruptly retired. JGR later fired Suarez. He raced for a back marker before helping put Trackhouse on the map. He\u2019ll try to do it over with Spire. Suarez earned a top-15 finish in each Daytona and Talladega race in 2025.<\/p>\n
15. Jimmie Johnson ($5,800) \u2014 Why not? The No. 84 Legacy Motor Club Toyota is locked into the Daytona 500 via the Open Exemption Provisional. Johnson ran around the back for most of the 2025 Daytona 500, but when the dust settled, he finished third.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pearce Dietrich gives his picks and ranks his top drivers for the 2026 Daytona 500 at Daytona. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,15225,82],"class_list":["post-467679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-rail","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}