NASCAR DFS: Cook Out Southern 500 @ Darlington Raceway

Welcome back, race fans. After a wild finish to the regular season finale at Daytona last weekend, the 16-driver field is set, and the new 10-race Chase is ready for the green flag! Finishing first overall in the regular season has earned Denny Hamlin a bit of a head start, as he will start the Chase with a 25-point lead over Ryan Blaney, a 35-point lead over Tyler Reddick, a 40-point lead over Ty Gibbs, and a 45-point lead over Chase Briscoe. You are not misreading that Toyota somewhat dominated the regular season and has five of the top 6 cars in the standings heading into the Chase. Things get started this Sunday with a return trip to Darlington Raceway for the Cook Out Southern 500.

NASCAR DFS: Cook Out Southern 500

Track Preview & Fantasy Angle

The playoffs begin with one of the tougher tracks in NASCAR. Darlington is a 1.366-mile oval with 25 degrees of banking in turns one and two and 23 degrees of banking in turns three and four. What makes Darlington so challenging for drivers and crews alike is really two-fold. On one hand, the track is egg-shaped, making running close to the wall very frequent, which is why we see a ton of “Darlington Stripes.” On the other hand, the track is older and very abrasive, making tire management paramount. For fantasy, this immediately has me looking for drivers with tons of experience and success here.

Top Pre-Qualifying Targets for DraftKings

Tyler Reddick ($10,500)

After a bit of a summer slump, Reddick appears back in form heading into the Chase with back-to-back Top 10 finishes at Daytona and New Hampshire. He now returns to Darlington, where he won in the spring and finished 2nd/4th in the two races here in 2025. He also leads all drivers with six Top 5 finishes here in the NextGen era, which is three clear of anyone else! It will ultimately come down to practice, but I will be trying hard to stack Hamlin and Reddick in a lot of lineups this week.

Chase Briscoe ($9,800)

Briscoe is the first driver under the $10K tier and comes in at #1 in my pre-qualifying model, where he is the only driver ranked top 10 in all the metrics. It starts with the track history, which may appear a bit up and down, but he returns to Darlington having won each of the last two Southern 500 playoff races. Along with that win at Darlington last fall, Briscoe also won the most recent intermediate race at Chicagoland and has the third-best average finish on the track type since the start of last season (15 races). Loving team Toyota this weekend and will likely stack two of Reddick, Hamlin, and Briscoe in almost every lineup.

Chris Buescher ($8,600)

Buescher comes into the Chase as the #10 seed and will be looking to move up at a track he has been very consistent at recently. He is tied with Reddick with four straight Top 10s here at Darlington and has six total in the nine NextGen era races at the track. His last two races on intermediates were not great (19th, 30th) but were preceded by four straight top 10s, so I am not worried at all. The biggest concern for Buescher is the overall form, as he has gone six straight races without a Top 10. I will want to see some speed in practice and some possible place differential upside to lock him in as a top play after qualifying.

Austin Cindric ($7,200)

It’s been a playoff atmosphere for the #2 for a while now as they have been riding the cutline for what seems like months. A strong finish to the regular season saw him finish 6th at Daytona, 12th at New Hampshire, and 3rd at Richmond. That is great news as he also has good track history at Darlington, finishing 13th or better in four straight starts and posting a career-high 5th here in the spring. In the low $7K range, he is one of my favorite values this week.