March 24, 2025
RFK Racing's Ryan Preece earned another strong result for the 2025 season as he placed ninth during Sunday's Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Beginning the race from the 31st position, Preece quietly spent the entire race working his way through the pack. At the end of the first stage, the No. 60 Ford driver made it to the 20th position, failing to score stage points. Preece made it even closer to the front by the end of the second stage, as he placed 14th. Then, in the final stage, Preece kept his car out of trouble, executed on pit stops, and drove his way up to the ninth position, collecting his second consecutive top-10 result of the season. It was the third time in his Cup career that Preece scored back-to-back top-10 finishes, and he now cracked the top 16 in the points standings for the first time this season.
--Sean Engel - RotoBallerSource: NASCAR.com
March 23, 2025
Homestead has always been one of Denny Hamlin's stronger tracks, so it didn't come as much of a surprise that he eventually finished fifth in Sunday's race there, but for a while, it looked like he might finish significantly worse. Hamlin initially started 23rd and fell back as low as 30th in the early laps of Stage 1, but a savvy strategy play to stay out of the pits later during each of the first two stages allowed him to have fresher tires at the end of both stages. It reaped great dividends, as he blasted through the field at the end of both stages, eventually finishing 11th in Stage 1 while making up a massive deficit to Ryan Blaney to win Stage 2. However, he lost the lead to Kyle Larson on the Stage 2 pit stops and would never regain it. His solid run helped erase some doubts as to how Hamlin would run on intermediates without Chris Gabehart as his crew chief.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
March 23, 2025
Although Chase Briscoe qualified fourth for Sunday's Homestead race (higher than any of his Joe Gibbs Racing teammates), a lot of people had rather low expectations given his history of struggling on intermediates for Stewart-Haas Racing. However, JGR is a lot faster than SHR on those tracks, and he had a lot more staying power than most people expected since he also finished fourth. He faded from view in Stage 2 after a slow pit stop but gradually worked his way through the field and he made a strong charge from eighth to third in the latter portions of Stage 3 and even came close to passing then-leaders Bubba Wallace and Alex Bowman before Kyle Larson ended up passing all three of them. The race really improved his playoff position, as he rose from 20th to 13th in points and is now above the playoff cut line.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
March 23, 2025
Defending NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano's streak of zero top-10 finishes to start the 2025 season continued with a 14th-place finish at Homestead. Given the speed of the Penske cars (especially Logano's teammate Ryan Blaney) in Sunday's event, Logano must have expected more. After starting 12th, Logano drove up to sixth when the caution for Christopher Bell's spin came out, but he lost several positions in the pits and only finished 10th at the end of Stage 1. During the stage-break caution, Logano and his quasi-teammate Josh Berry made contact in the pits, and both drivers spun and struggled to recover. Logano did drive his way back to finish 14th, stopping the bleeding once again. His many stage points have allowed him to maintain the 11th spot in points, and he now only sits two points behind his teammate Blaney, even though he significantly out-ran Logano on Sunday.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
March 23, 2025
Tyler Reddick had a strangely muted run at Homestead, which is conventionally one of his best tracks in the NASCAR Cup Series. After winning last fall's race at Homestead in gallant fashion, he only finished 8th today after running much worse than that for most of the event. Although he gained five positions from 20th to 15th on the opening lap, he fell to 18th at the end of Stage 1 and wouldn't creep into the top ten for good until the later portions of Stage 2 in a race where his teammate Bubba Wallace was one of the fastest drivers. He remained in the top ten continuously in Stage 3 rising as high as 4th, but he was nearly always behind his teammate at one of his best tracks in a curiously mediocre run. Although he still ranks fourth in points, he has yet to make an on-track pass for the lead but it seems likely that will change pretty soon.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
March 23, 2025
After a string of futility in his first half-season as a Spire Motorsports driver, Justin Haley earned his first top-10 finish on a non-drafting oval at Homestead on Sunday. In a race that had relatively little attrition, Haley started 21st and steadily worked his way through the pack during the race, finishing 15th at the end of Stage 1 and 20th in Stage 2 before he made a solid charge from 15th to 10th after the restart following Ryan Blaney's engine failure. This marks the second consecutive week that Haley has been the highest-finishing Spire driver in a race, and his finish moved him up four positions in points to 24th. However, it doesn't look like he will be seriously contending for wins anytime soon.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
March 23, 2025
After a long run of consistent finishes in races where he has otherwise mostly been a non-factor, Alex Bowman earned his first pole on a non-drafting superspeedway for Sunday's Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Although you'd think Homestead would be one of his absolute best tracks since it is similar to Chicagoland, Kansas, and Las Vegas -- where he's either won and/or run well before -- Bowman has never led there or finished better than seventh. Both of those will likely change since Bowman seems faster than he has in years, and in last week's Las Vegas race, he made a pass for the lead and recovered from a flat tire to drive up to seventh. If he has no bad luck with the consistency he's had, a top-five finish almost seems likely, but he's probably not going to win. Bowman has a lot of DFS value if you think he's going to dominate the race, but more likely he won't lead after the end of Stage 1.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
March 23, 2025
Denny Hamlin has been reliably consistent at Homestead over the years, earning 13 top-10 finishes in 20 starts as well as three wins. He has also led all three Homestead races with the Next Gen chassis and battled Ryan Blaney and his driver Tyler Reddick for the win last year, but now his former crew chief Chris Gabehart has been replaced by Chris Gayle, and Hamlin doesn't seem as fast. On paper, Hamlin should be one of the best options for DFS play since he qualified 23rd and is likely to score many place-differential points in addition to the fact that he leads here often, but the crew-chief change and his mediocre run last week at Las Vegas (where he started 15th, finished 25th, and only had an average running position of 22nd) suggest that he is likely overvalued for this race.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
March
23,
2025
Joey
Logano
has
gotten
a
lot
of
criticism
for
being
the
first
defending
NASCAR
Cup
Series
champion
to
fail
to
earn
a
top-10
finish
in
the
first
five
races
of
the
season,
but
that
doesn't
reflect
how
well
he
has
run
read more...
March 23, 2025
After Josh Berry's semi-surprise first win at Las Vegas last week, he has continued to keep up his consistently good qualifying and starts on the outside front row for Sunday's Homestead race. Although he's definitely gained a lot of speed over his entire sophomore season, he still needed a lot of help from faster cars or drivers either losing tires or making strategic errors. It still seems unlikely to expect Berry to lead any particular non-drafting oval race without some help, but he's obviously a lot faster than last year. Berry did have a solid 11th-place finish in his first Homestead start last year, so he'll likely be a strong contender for a top-10 finish. However, he qualified too well to have much DFS value unless you think he'll lead the race, which is definitely possible since he's arguably looked faster than pole-sitter Alex Bowman this year.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
March 23, 2025
After Daniel Suárez's unexpected second-place finish last week at Las Vegas where his teammate Ross Chastain seemed to have the most speed for a while, Suárez qualified a miserable 33rd at Homestead, which suggests there's a lot of value there if the Trackhouse Racing cars are able to carry over their speed to other intermediate tracks. Homestead is not normally a top track for Suárez, though, as he has only earned a single top-10 finish once, but he has finished in the top 16 in his last four starts. He's likely to gain a lot of spots from 33rd, but admittedly there are a lot of races where Suárez seems to have no speed at all, and it doesn't seem like his fast races are very predictable. Nonetheless, given his poor qualifying, his recent finishes, and Trackhouse's speed last week, Suárez is probably undervalued.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
March 23, 2025
Shane van Gisbergen is making his first NASCAR Cup Series start at Homestead. He qualified 25th and finished 17th in his one Xfinity Series start, typically behind A.J. Allmendinger and ahead of Josh Williams. However, that isn't enough experience to make him necessarily valuable at Homestead or really any oval. The fact that he qualified 35th and is very cheap at $6,000 means that he could be valuable in terms of Place Differential points if he backs into a solid finish, but that seems much less likely at Homestead than a lot of other tracks because the races there tend to reward performance and don't devolve into the crapshoots that would be necessary for him to gain enough positions to be valuable in DFS. Once again, chalk this up as a learning experience.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
March 23, 2025
Although Austin Cindric had a reputation of fading to mid-pack in most of the races where he qualified well, that definitely seems to have stopped in 2025 as he has seemed to have a lot more staying power up front. In last week's race at Las Vegas, he overcame a loose wheel after winning Stage 1 to finish 6th. Such a recovery was not typical of him in previous seasons and the Team Penske cars seem faster on a race-by-race level than they have the past couple years. Given the fact that he qualified 8th at Homestead, Cindric will still probably lose positions in the race but he has been leading enough including at Las Vegas that there is a distinct possibility he might accumulate some leader and/or fastest lap points in this race, but he likely needs to lead to have any DFS value.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: 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 - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
March 23, 2025
John Hunter Nemechek qualified seventh for Sunday's Homestead race, which is actually his best-ever as a full-time driver since his fifth-place finish at Charlotte in 2020 came with metric qualifying, and his fourth-place starting position in 2022 also came at Homestead while he was filling in for the injured Kurt Busch. It would be an inspiring story if Nemechek were to win at the track where his namesake uncle had died, but although Legacy Motor Club definitely looks a little faster this year than they have in the past, Nemechek's starting position seems unsustainable, just as it did in 2022, when he finished 27th. He has never finished better than 19th or led a lap at the track, although he was briefly very fast in 2022. In all likelihood, Nemechek will finish much worse than he starts, which should make him one of the worst DFS options.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
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