Daily Fantasy NASCAR DraftKings Forecast: 2025 Shriners Children’s 500

As a kid, I played a whole lot of NASCAR video games, and every single time the NASCAR Cup Series comes back to Phoenix Raceway, I think of something the late, great Bill Weber said in the intro sequence:

”Welcome back to the jewel in the desert.”

A weird combination of short/flat track and tricky intermediate, Phoenix can be extremely tricky to pick. The dominant cars in past years’ championship races there have belonged to Roger Penske.

Obviously, you can’t pick all the Team Penske drivers up, as there’s a salary cap after all. But if you blend them together with a few of the usual suspects, guys from Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing, you should have a recipe for success and cap space to boot.

Quickly, let’s recap last week’s event from Circuit of the Americas. COTA ended up being another mixed bag fantasy-wise. As you’ll see below, I was begging for some consistency. So it was a top heavy lineup, with a couple of low salary dark horses at the bottom.

As for my betting slip, Chase Elliott’s Herculean comeback from getting turned on lap 1 almost got me my first payday of 2025, but he ran out of laps to run down that podium finish. Bad breaks like that mean we’re close to hitting it big though, folks.

2025 Echo Park Automotive Grand Prix Fantasy/Betting Breakdown

Right on the Money	Lick Your Wounds
Tyler Reddick, 42.6 points scored	AJ Allmendinger, -2.8 points scored
Chris Buescher, 54.9 points scored	Allmendinger (+1400) to win, 30th-place finish
Michael McDowell, 37.8 points scored	Ford (+600) to win

DraftKings Rules of the Road

Drivers will be awarded points based on their finishing position, position differential, fastest laps and laps led. The driver who wins the race scores 45 fantasy points, while second place gets 42 points, third gets 41 points and so on, at least through the top 10. The 11th-place finisher scores 32 points, 21st gets 21 and 31st gets 10.

However many spots drivers lose or gain on the track are added or subtracted from their score. If the driver leads a lap, they will earn 0.25 points for each lap led and 0.45 for each fastest lap.

Fantasy Forecast

1. Christopher Bell ($11,000)

Probably the easiest pick so far of 2025. Bell has been white-hot for the first three weeks of the season. Heck, he could be going for four wins in a row this week instead of three honestly, had he not been swept up in a crash at Daytona International Speedway.

I don’t know if he and this No. 20 team will be able to put together another win, but he’s so good at Phoenix, it doesn’t matter. He won this race a year ago and has finished in the top 10 in four out of his last five starts at this track.

The $11,000 price tag is high, but he’s a can’t-miss option this week.

2. Joey Logano ($10,200)

Kyle Larson himself has said that it is impossible to stop the Team Penske cars at this racetrack, so I’m going to go with the lead dog this weekend.

Logano is the most-recent winner there, coming in last fall’s championship race, so of course he’s an obvious candidate. He also boasts a staggering four wins and a 13.1 career average finish.

That’s a better average finish than Bell with many more starts to his record. I look for the defending champion to be the gatekeeper for the rest of the field for sure.

3. Chase Briscoe ($9,000)

The driver of the iconic Bass Pro Shops Toyota Camry has had arguably the best week of anybody outside of his teammate.

The points penalty Briscoe received following the Daytona 500 was overturned, and he gained a huge amount of points without even touching a steering wheel. To me, that spells instant momentum, as he comes back to the site of his first career win.

I don’t think that he’ll be a serious contender for the win, as he and this team haven’t shown that race-winning speed as of yet. But he will have a solid top-10 run and rake in solid points for owners who sign him.

4. Josh Berry ($7,600)

As I mentioned, the salary cap is being pushed by the top of the lineup this week. So I don’t have enough to spend on Ryan Blaney, and Austin Cindric hasn’t shown nearly the strength at Phoenix that his teammates have. By default, I feel good about picking Wood Brothers Racing’s No. 21, as it is basically the fourth Team Penske team via its alliance.

Berry’s background also supports the idea he’ll do well this week. He rose through the ranks winning on short, flat tracks in NASCAR’s grassroots divisions after all.

I expect a solid, top 15-20 run for this group.

5. Riley Herbst ($5,900)

I started this week’s column talking about how I needed consistency from my lineup, and I like what I’ve seen out of “Mr. 17th” so far this season.

That’s right, Herbst has put together three straight 17th-place finishes to start the season, which is mind boggling. I think he’ll do a little better this week though.

After all, he did win the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Phoenix in the fall. If his crew get the ever important balance to his liking, he could pull a sneaky top-10 finish this week.

6. John Hunter Nemechek ($5,300)

It goes without saying at this point that JHN is in the middle of a career year so far.

Nemechek opened things up with two straight top-10 finishes and scored a solid 22nd at COTA despite qualifying 33rd. I believe he will keep it rolling at Phoenix. He’s won there in the Xfinity Series and has qualified in the top 20 in both of his starts there with Legacy Motor Club.

If Nemechek can stay out of trouble and avoid crippling mistakes on the track, this could be a slam-dunk pick on a low salary.

Prop Bets and Locks

1. Ryan Blaney (+500) to win: I should change the title of this column to “When in Doubt, Pick a Penske Driver.” I desperately want to hit on a wager this week, and even though I didn’t have room for him on my fantasy team, YRB is where the real money lies. He’s one of the young pillars of the sport, and he’s due for a win.
2. Ty Gibbs (+210) to win Group D (Brad Keselowski, Bubba Wallace, Josh Berry): Boy, I bet Gibbs is happy to see a somewhat traditional oval on the schedule this week. After being involved in crashes for three straight weeks, he’s going to be desperate to turn things around, and there may be no better place to do that than Phoenix. After all, he turned in a podium result in this race last spring.
3. Kyle Busch (+125) over Denny Hamlin (-170): KFB’s performance at COTA is the driving factor in me recommending this wager. I’ve heard it be said that as a driver who’s struggling, sometimes you just need a good run to prove you can still do it at a high level. That was Busch last week, as he dominated for most of the event, leading the most laps. Hamlin, on the other hand hasn’t looked like himself at all this season, and he has no momentum.

Don’t forget to follow me on X for more picks and wagers for the NASCAR Xfinity Series race as well!