Brickyard 400 DFS Picks: Indianapolis DraftKings and FanDuel
Indy is a track-position puzzle, not a laps-led race. Here is how to attack a slate where the fastest cars start deep and fuel strategy writes the ending.
The Brickyard is one of the crown jewels, and for DFS it is one of the most distinctive puzzles on the calendar. This is a flat 2.5-mile rectangle where straightaway speed, four-corner balance, and patience into the tight Turn 1 matter far more than raw dominance. Passing is genuinely hard. Track position is close to everything.
The place-differential core
Qualifying did the hard work for us. Several of the best cars in the field will roll off from deep in the pack, which is exactly the profile you want at a track where finishing position is projectable and passing is at a premium.
The defending Brickyard winner starts 29th with the best place-differential projection on the board. He is also the heaviest chalk on the slate at 62 percent, so he is a near-lock in cash but offers no leverage in tournaments. He went to victory lane here a year ago and profiles as the core play of the slate. One caution worth noting: he brushed the wall in practice, so confirm he is not in a backup car before you lock.
This is the exact profile Indy rewards: an elite car starting 23rd. Bell has led just two laps here since the return, but that is not the point. He should be strong enough to compete for a top five, and every spot he gains from 23rd is points in your pocket.
The top-rated car on our board and the leverage play within the elite tier. Byron piles up fastest laps at Indy, starts 21st, and at 36 percent draws meaningfully less ownership than Bell at 48. Same structural upside, better price on the roster.
Indy has never been Elliott’s best track, but starting 27th makes him a strong place-differential option regardless. The finish should climb; the only knock is that the leverage is hard to find because plenty of players will land on him.
Value that makes the build work
The elite core is not cheap, and the only way to fit two or three of those cars is to nail the value tier. Fortunately the same deep-qualifying dynamic created a set of genuinely live cheap climbers.
Starts 35th and led 40 laps here a year ago. Even without a repeat of that dominator run, the place-differential math from the second-to-last row is excellent, and the pace has been there at Indy before. The single best value on the board.
Starts 34th on a team that executes at a very high level. Preece should push toward the top 15, and at this salary that finish is a smash. He frees up the money you need for the Bell and Wallace tier.
Easy to overlook from 36th, but Gilliland has finished sixth at Indianapolis each of the last two years and runs top 20 consistently on similar tracks. A cheap climber with a real ceiling.
Dominators: pick one, not three
Because no one runs away with laps led here, you do not need to load up on dominators. You want one source of laps-led and fastest-lap points, then spend the rest of your salary on the place-differential board.
The best of the top-tier options. Larson tends to rack up fastest laps, he posted the best ten-lap average in practice, which is the long-run speed that matters most here, and he starts tenth with room to move forward. Here is the kicker: at 27 percent he is lower owned than the pole-sitter Hocevar at 51. He is the better dominator and the lower-owned one. If you take one expensive dominator, make it this one.
The pole-sitter carries the field-high projected laps led, and at 51 percent he is the second-most popular play on the slate. But the Indy pole has never actually hit the optimal lineup, and this race produces so much off-strategy chaos that leading early guarantees nothing. Being underweight here and hoping he gets trapped in a bad pit cycle is a defensible tournament stance.
Fades and traps
Priced like a contributor but starting seventh, which means no place-differential runway. He needs to find the lead to justify the salary, and that is a thin bet on this track.
A good Indy car in an awkward DFS spot. Starting third leaves him no place-differential path, and he needs to lead laps to pay off a top-tier salary. Easy to leave out of cash lineups.
How to build it
Cash game core
Tournament build
Contrarian angle
The bottom line
Do not chase laps led at Indianapolis. Build around elite cars that qualified deep, take Larson as your one dominator, and fund it all with the Cindric and Preece value tier off the back rows. Then remember how this race usually ends: fuel mileage and a late restart. Leave a little room in your player pool for the chaos, because the Brickyard almost always delivers it.