SpeedyCash.com 250 DFS Picks & NASCAR Playbook - Texas, 4/12

Well we knew it was all coming. Whether we liked it or not, we had to endure a weekend at Texas Motor Speedway at some point. Might as well get it out of the way early, right? 

Texas can be… Dull yet unpredictable at the same time, if that makes any sense. If you need to revisit the highlights from last year’s race, I suggest clicking this link for more details. But last year’s action at Texas had a dozen cautions for 36 laps. 

Nicholas Sanchez dominated this race with 168 laps led but he finished a lap down in overtime. Hailie Deegan scored her best career finish in the Truck Series. Carson Hocevar landed his first win, while Chase Purdy finished second. It was truly the chaos and variance we’ve come to expect from the Truck Series, but at the end of the day we also know that Texas just doesn’t produce the best product at times. 

Track position weighs heavily here because it can be difficult to pass, especially for the lead. But we still have some money to be made for this weekend’s action and we have Kyle Busch on this slate. Here are Friday night’s top NASCAR DFS picks for your SpeedyCash.com 250 lineups!

SpeedyCash.com 250 DFS Picks: Core Drivers

Texas Motor Speedway falls into that category of being a “cookie cutter” 1.5-mile track. They all aren’t identical as the specific shape and banking vary. But when we talk 1.5-mile intermediates we look at tracks like Texas, Vegas, Kansas, and Charlotte. 

Texas underwent a repave and renovation within the last 10 years and it routinely rates as one of the worst tracks on the schedule each year. For that reason, I blame nobody if they want to play light this weekend. With the Masters in full swing and UFC 300 on Saturday night, NASCAR did a fine job scheduling its worst weekend with better events to watch.

Friday’s race is scheduled for 167 laps. The stages will be broken up into 40-40-87 lap segments and each team will have four sets of tires. Track position will be key and you cannot afford an error on pit road. It can, and will, be difficult to make up track position if there are longer green flag runs. 

As mentioned at the top, we do have Kyle Busch in this race Friday night. He’s back in the 7-truck for Spire Motorsports and he’s priced accordingly. Busch has raced in the Truck Series at Texas three times dating back to 2014. 

He’s won all three races and led at least 70 laps in each race while having a driver rating over 140. In 14 races at Texas in the trucks, he has five wins and 10 finishes in the top four. Most of those came with his old team, Kyle Busch Motorsports, but we’ve still seen him dominate with Spire this year already.

As always, there will be updates in RED following practice and qualifying which is set to start at 4:05pm ET on Friday.

SpeedyCash.com 250 Practice Notes

Top-Price Core Plays

Kyle Busch ($14,500)

Kyle Busch gets the typical “Kyle Busch Price Tag” when he races in this series. And the strategy is always the same. You play Kyle Busch with the idea in mind that he dominates the entire race and likely wins. Busch won the Truck Series race at Atlanta back in February and led 105 laps at Bristol while finishing as the runner-up. Connor Zilisch had errors and penalties galore at COTA and still finished top five with this truck. And Sammy Smith grabbed a top 10 finish last week at Martinsville with Spire. 

So the truck is clearly competitive and Busch is the best driver in the field. If he lands the pole, or even gains track position on pit road, he can run away with the clean air and get dominator points. It’s possible you can fit a secondary dominator in the $8,500-$9,500 range but that really leaves you filling out the remaining four drivers with value plays and that’s a bit of a gamble. 

You also need to consider whether you go overweight or underweight with Busch for this race. You have no leverage simply matching the field. From there, you hope one of your Busch lineups is the optimal one. So take a stand and be bold with your Busch lineups.

Ty Majeski ($10,200)

I’m skipping over Corey Heim this week. It’s not that he’s a bad play, but I want to highlight Majeski a little more before the afternoon events begin. Majeski had a great showing last week at Martinsville. He finished second and led 66 laps with 28 fast laps. And that performance comes on the tail of a top three finish at COTA.

I’m optimistic Majeski will be fast for tonight’s race because he had speed at Vegas with 40 laps led and 18 fastest laps. He may have only finished 10^th but we can hang our hat on the fact that Vegas draws some comparisons to Texas. Majeski also has a pair of top five finishes in the last two Texas races, so I’ll ride the wave he’s been on the last couple weeks. Update: Starts P11 after a relatively bad qualifying effort by his standards. But both he and Heim start outside the top 10 and should be fine plays assuming they'll have strong long-run speed.

Ben Rhodes ($9,300)

This is where we weigh whether to go for position differential or dominator potential. Rhodes is probably good enough in Cash games because he has top five upside and some win equity, but the dominator potential could be limited from this spot.

Nicholas Sanchez ($9,000)

This is a friendly price tag, especially considering how dominant Sanchez was at Texas in 2023 until late race shenanigans forced him out of the top 15. But at the end of the day, he still led 168 laps. After three straight results outside the top 15 at Vegas, Bristol, and COTA, Sanchez was able to crack the top five last week at Martinsville.

He still carries the win from Daytona with two additional top five finishes. He’ll be one I’m keeping my eye on during practice and qualifying later this afternoon. This Chevrolet team, with its affiliation to Spire Motorsports, should be competitive Friday night. Update: Sanchez is on the pole for tonight's race, similar to last year, after he laid down a phenomenal lap in qualifying.

Mid-Price Core Plays

Rajah Caruth ($8,700)

Gone are the days of enjoying a discount on Caruth. Ever since his win at Vegas, he’s been priced up considerably the last couple races. But it’s because of the win at Vegas that I’m interested in Caruth ahead of practice and qualifying. Both Texas and Vegas are 1.5-mile intermediates. The banking or surface? Not all that similar. But overall, they do fall into the “cookie cutter” 1.5-mile track layout.

Caruth came on strong later in the year last season on intermediates. He finished sixth at Darlington, 11^th at Charlotte, 12^th at Kansas, and eighth at Homestead. But earlier this year he broke through and now possesses some win equity following the effort at Vegas. He has five top eight finishes in the six races so far this year. It would be nice if we could get some PD out of him, but I’ll try not to get too greedy. Update: He starts P10 but he looked very strong in practice and will likely had decent long-run speed given how Spire looked as a whole.

Tyler Ankrum ($8,500)

These next two drivers have plenty of intrigue on my part. But no one should be too surprised since I’ve written them up in recent NASCAR DFS lineup picks articles. Ankrum joined McAnally-Hilgemann Racing in the offseason and he’s off to one of the best starts to any season in his career. He led 62 laps between Daytona and Atlanta while finishing 11^th and seventh at both races respectively.

The finish at COTA isn’t all that great (25^th), but he finished second at Vegas, fifth at Bristol, and fifth at Martinsville. That runner-up finish at Vegas certainly looms large. And it’s not like he lucked into that finish either. He was consistently running toward the front of the field and had a 110.1 driver rating, which was fourth-best among all drivers.

His teammate, Christian Eckes, already has two wins this season on the two short tracks we’ve visited. Ankrum will always be more of a longshot than Eckes, but this is some of the best equipment he’s operated in recent years and I do think he’s capable of grabbing a win this year. Update: Both Ankrum and Tanner Gray got into the wall hard during practice. They'll go to backup trucks for tonight's race and start at the tail end of the field, likely carrying significant ownership.

Matt Crafton ($8,200)

Another week where Crafton is dreadful at qualifying. He starts P22 and, once again, has good equipment and enough talent/experience to drive this truck to a top 10 finish. He's raced here 43 times but since the re-pave he has nine finishes in the top 10. He hits 5X value with a top 12 finish.

Taylor Gray ($7,600)

We have the same situation as last week. I just do not understand this price tag for Gray. What does he need to do to get into the $8K range? Now I will say that it’s possible his price is kept down because Kyle Busch is so expensive. DraftKings knows that if you juice the price of one member of the player pool, you have to make other drivers affordable to build sound lineups.

Gray has returned at least 35 fantasy points on DraftKings in five straight races. But in four of those races he’s gone for 43+ and in two he’s gone for 60+ while finishing seventh or better in each race of this five-race sample size. He’s been so good that he’s been getting opportunities to drive for Joe Gibbs Racing in the Xfinity Series. At the end of the day, he drives for the same team as Corey Heim and have mercy if he can ever start collecting dominator points. 

Value-Price Core Plays

Johnny Sauter ($7,000)

Sauter steps into this race at an appropriate price tag. He’ll be driving the 45-truck for Niece Motorsports. We know it won’t be the best ride in the field. However, Carson Hocevar got a couple wins for this team last year, and Sauter is a former Truck Series champion. Sauter appeared in three races in 2023 but was affiliated with Roper Racing. He qualified poorly in all three races but logged just one top 20 finish at Kansas. 

So far in 2024, Sauter raced for Niece at Daytona, starting P2 while leading 24 laps but he was caught up in a wreck. In his career he does have five wins at Texas so there’s certainly plenty of experience. I wouldn’t give him much win equity for this race. But he likely goes out early enough in qualifying where the track will have likely cooled and I think he offers some position differential. His teammate, Bayley Currey ($6,400), also draws some interest from me but I’m operating as if he starts much higher than Sauter later tonight.

Jake Garcia ($6,700)

This could very well be my last time writing up Jake Garcia. It’s not that he’s been terrible, but you just expected more from the equipment he’s been running in. He does have four finishes of 16^th or better this year, including an 11^th place finish at Vegas. The DFS results have been rather ho-hum because he’s qualified well in every race except for COTA.

Last year’s race had quite a bit of chaos, but at the end of the day Garcia started P9 and finished fifth. But last year on intermediates he finished 10^th at Vegas, eighth at Kansas-1, 15^th at Charlotte, and 11^th at Kansas-2. He even finished second in the championship race at Phoenix but that gets swept under the rug because we care more about the champion around that time. 

There’s still some top 10 equity here but we just haven’t quite seen him break through with a slate-breaking score yet at low ownership. But this does seem to be his preferred track so I’ll lean on him one more time as a value play before throwing in the towel. Update: I'll likely plug Garcia into some of my lineups but not a ton. Based on how some of these value plays shook out there are drivers with better safety nets.

Kris Wright ($6,400)

Shame on me for not initially realizing Kris Wright was driving for TRICON this week in the 1-truck. We can safely assume it'll be competitive. It's mostly a question of what he can do with the truck but he does start in the mid 20's so the PD is there and we know this is easily a top 12 ride most weeks.

Stefan Parsons ($6,000)

Parsons is running a part-time schedule this season, but he’s grabbed top 20 finishes at Daytona, Bristol, and COTA. He doesn’t have a ton of experience at Texas. However, in 2022 he finished 17^th and 13^th here in the two Xfinity Series races with Alpha Prime Racing. He’s traditionally run in poor equipment across both series in recent years. But this partnership with Henderson Motorsports might be a good fit. 

They’re a small team that does allocate their resources well and make the most of their equipment. Similar to Sauter, Parsons probably goes out early in Friday’s qualifying session. So, he won’t qualify in the best conditions, and I do expect him to once again be on our PD radar for this race. 

If he starts around P27 and gets his fourth top 20 finish of the year, he’s paying off the price tag. Any other track position he gains would just be gravy. But we’ll re-assess once we know the starting order. We do need to be mindful that Timmy Hill ($5,900) is also in play in this range and has started P27 in five straight races. You can never go wrong with the safety next of Timmy Hill in the Truck Series.

NASCAR DFS Lineup Picks: SpeedyCash.com 250