“It’s a place to be. It’s almost like a church. You go there to worship speed.”
– Bobby Rahal, 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner
This Sunday my friends, it’s time once again for the NASCAR Cup Series to visit the cathedral of speed, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Everybody who’s anybody knows how tough it is to win the Brickyard 400; legends like Dale Earnhardt and Bill Elliott only pulled it off once. Some of them are in rarified air, like five-time winner Jeff Gordon, four-time winner Jimmie Johnson or two-time winner Tony Stewart.
What I’m getting at is that as hard as it is to win this race, it’s just as hard to pick a lineup. This is the very definition of a driver’s track. Four distinct turns and massive straightaways that mean that balance between handling and straight-line speed is the absolute biggest factor for running well.
Track position will also be vital. It’s brutally hard to pass here, so if there’s a winner from a deep starting position, strategy must have been at play.
I would also study the race at Pocono Raceway from a few weeks ago. The drivers that ran well there will almost certainly be good here also due to the similarity between the two.
I know that’s a lot to take in, but if you can keep it all in mind, you’ll have a good weekend at Indy.
Fantasy/Betting Breakdown: 2025 Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400
| Right on the Money | Lick Your Wounds |
| Chase Elliott: 124.9 points scored | Josh Berry: 0 points scored |
| Brad Keselowski: 40 points scored | Ross Chastain: -1.5 points scored |
| Alex Bowman: 72.3 points scored | Shane Van Gisbergen +350 to finish top ten: finished last |
Yep, Elliott might not have won the race for my team last week, but he sure did win my group for me. 124.9 points is the most any driver in my lineup has ever scored since I’ve been writing this column. He made it really hard not to pick him this week, but I think I have some good horses in the stable, nonetheless.
2025 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, any 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 points for each fastest lap.
Fantasy Forecast
Kyle Larson ($10,500)
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: a sportswriter pens a column in which he says an elite athlete looks like he’s lost a step, and the athlete comes out two days later and shows the world he’s far from done.
That was Larson last week. I wrote that I thought he and crew chief Cliff Daniels seemed to have lost their way prior to his run at Dover Motor Speedway last week. Now I’m eating crow.
Larson remains elite, Daniels can still crew chief like few others, and they’ll defend their 2024 win here with another big W.
Chase Briscoe ($9,300)
If there’s anybody in the garage that is as big a threat to win, it’s this native son returning home.
Briscoe is coming off two straight runner-up finishes, and of course, he won at Pocono.
While he didn’t run well at all here in 2024 (he finished 24th), that might be a small thing to consider when picking him, as he has a large advantage in his favor.
Crew chief James Small is quite possibly calling races better than he has at any point in his career thus far. It sure would be special to see Briscoe in victory lane Sunday, and he has his best chance at it yet.
Ty Gibbs ($8,600)
Guys, I’m kind of starting to believe in Gibbs again.
Week after week as of late, this team appears to be closer to breaking through and becoming something special.
Sure, he finished 23rd in this race a year ago, and he only ran 14th at Pocono, but he has three straight top ten finishes since then. I have to go with recency bias here.
Brad Keselowski ($8,300)
Keselowski has slowly but surely been digging himself out of the massive trench he dug in the early part of the 2025 season.
I mean, he’s only made his way up to 27th in points, but at one point, he was well outside the top 30. What’s more he’s on a bit of a hot streak himself.
His 10th place finish at Dover marked his third top 15 finish in his last four starts. I don’t think he’s going to come close to winning his second Brickyard 400, but if he can get another top ten?
Well, he’s worth the price tag.
Carson Hocevar ($7,900)
We go from three pretty hotly performing drivers to one who isn’t doing so well as of late.
Hocevar comes into Indy with three straight finishes of 32nd or worse, and last week at Dover, it appeared his poor result was due to overall pace in his Chevrolet.
However, not all is lost, because his last decent run was at Pocono, where he qualified third and wound up 18th.
As long as he doesn’t finish as bad as he has been, he’s worth the risk, but if he can’t get it together, he’s probably not gonna be on the list for a few weeks.
Todd Gilliland ($5,300)
As bad as Hocevar has been over the past month, Gilliland has been as mediocre. Truthfully, it’s been a rough few months for the driver of the No. 34 Ford Mustang.
His last top ten finish was at Martinsville Speedway all the way back in March, and his last top 15 was at Kansas Speedway. So why, you may ask, would I say he’s a smart pick?
Well, his price is bargain barrel cheap, but he’s also never finished outside the top 10 at Indy in a NASCAR Cup Series race. He got his first career top ten on the road course back in 2022, and last year he scored his best finish of the year with a sixth-place run.
Theres just something about this place with him, and I think at this price, it’s a solid gamble.
Prop Bets and Locks
- Briscoe +1100 to win: I can’t put my finger on it, but I just like the Hoosier this week. He’s red hot, which helps, and the numbers don’t lie. Winning at your home track is special, and there is perhaps no home track more special than this one. If he can do what he did at Pocono, which is outlast guys like Larson and Hamlin, he would become the third Indiana native to win this race.
- Ty Dillon +195 over Gibbs -280 to win the In Season Challenge: “Cinderella” has danced all the way to the final of this really fun tournament where he meets one more giant yet to slay. I don’t think there is anyone on the Earth who truly thinks Dillon can take down Gibbs head-to-head, but stranger things have happened. Heck, that should be the title of his magical run to the final. This is a fun bet, and I’m definitely going to run money on this one.
- Parlay — Larson to finish top Chevrolet, Ryan Blaney to finish top Ford +422: DraftKings offered this super fun parlay and I love it. Now there’s an extremely high chance that this one will hit when it comes to Larson, but Blaney is a little different.
Garrett joined Frontstretch as a news writer in 2023, and became a fantasy racing and betting writer in 2024. Hailing from the heart of coal country in southern West Virginia, he's a married father of three and currently enrolled in the Physical Therapy Assistant Program at New River Community Technical College in Beaver, WV.
Follow on X @Cook_g9