April 12, 2025

The No. 47 team brought a sporty race car for Ricky Stenhouse Jr. to work with in the Food City 500 this weekend, as Stenhouse was not only the quickest car in practice on Saturday, but he also qualified second for Sunday's race. This is the best starting position that Stenhouse has ever had at Bristol Motor Speedway. Now the question becomes: Can he stay up front? Thunder Valley has been a struggle for Stenhouse of late, as he has just one finish better than 20th in his last 10 starts here. However, that one finish was a 10th-place effort back in 2023, so there's some hope for him this weekend. As far as playability in DFS tournaments, Stenhouse ($6,500 on DraftKings) is super risky because of his high likelihood for negative place-differential points. However, if the No. 47 Chevrolet can get out and lead laps early, those dominator points could soften the blow from the inevitable negative place differential. In all likelihood, it's best to stay away from Stenhouse in DFS this weekend. After qualifying, Stenhouse remarked, "It's not a surprising run, Bristol's my favorite track. We've worked on ways to find speed and it's great to see it pay off. We'll see what happens tomorrow, I feel we were good at managing tires last year."--Jordan McAbee
Source: PRN

April 6, 2025

Ricky Stenhouse Jr.'s career pretty much lives and dies on his performances on drafting tracks now, as he is never anything more than anonymous anywhere else these days. Don't expect that to change at Darlington, where he only earned a single top-10 finish in the 2022 spring race and has never led a lap. Even in that race, he didn't run that well since his average running position was 17th, and he mostly benefited from the fact that 13 cars didn't finish -- that normally doesn't happen here. Since he's starting 28th and only costs $6,500, the case is there that he could be valuable for DFS play if you think he could back into a decent finish at all, but he would likely have to back into it due to attrition or wild strategy. It's unlikely to happen.--Sean Wrona - RotoBaller
Source: Racing Reference

March 30, 2025

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. qualified 34th at Martinsville, worst of all the established veterans in competitive cars. However, this isn't particularly a good track for him, as he has never led a lap and has only earned three top-10 finishes with an average finish of 24.1 despite only crashing once here. He did earn his best finish here in the 2023 spring race when he finished eighth, but his speed declined significantly in the second half of 2023 and never completely recovered, and his average running position even in that race was only 17th. From where he's starting, he'll probably gain a fair bit of place-differential points, but he won't even sniff the lead, so he won't score nearly enough lap-leader or fastest-lap points to be viable for DFS.--Sean Wrona - RotoBaller
Source: Racing Reference

March 23, 2025

Despite Ricky Stenhouse Jr.'s reputation as a superspeedway driver, Homestead has arguably been his worst superspeedway. At all tracks where Stenhouse has failed to ever earn a top-10 finish in the NASCAR Cup Series, he has made more starts at Homestead than any other despite some solid qualifying runs. He might have some DFS value, as his average finish of 21.6 is better than his 27th-place starting position, suggesting he may gain a few positions on place differential. He's also rather cheap at $6,700, but even though he's still technically in the playoffs right now, he's also declined from his peak and it seems like right now the best he can do on a track like this is barely finishing in the top 20 and not leading at all, which won't give him enough points to be a leading DFS option.--Sean Wrona - RotoBaller
Source: Racing Reference