Who Should I Pick to Win the NASCAR In-Season Challenge? Driver Ranks for All Five Rounds

In college basketball, picking the higher seed in the tournament will usually wind up okay for you.

Those seeds are determined by a committee, which looks at each team’s entire body of work to rank them against each other.

That ain’t gonna fly for NASCAR.

The seeds for the inaugural NASCAR In-Season Challenge were set by each driver’s best finishes across the past three races. Shane Van Gisbergen would have been one of the top seeds for the tournament due to his win in Mexico City – but he didn’t even qualify for the tournament. You’re not getting that in other bracket-style contests.

If I make a power ranking of the drivers based on my numbers, William Byron winds up being the top-rated driver. He’s the 18 seed.

If you pick chalk based on seeds, you’re going to struggle.

Luckily, we have a good idea of which drivers will be strong at each track across the five rounds. We’re not haphazardly throwing darts.

Let’s run through how my model ranks the entire 32-driver field for each track in the tournament. Then we can discuss some takeaways below about what it means for filling out brackets as weigh strategy and more.

Want to fill out your own bracket? Check out our free printable bracket for the NASCAR In-Season Challenge tournament here.

NASCAR In-Season Challenge Driver Rankings for Each Round

As a note, the rankings below are based on a preliminary run of my model. The model for each race will look a bit different as it is more of an involved process. So don’t be shocked if things look a bit different when my sims for Atlanta go up later this week, and I’ll also throw up the odds my model assigns to each individual matchup for the opening round on Friday.

As of now, though, here’s where it ranks each driver across all five rounds.

Four of the five highest-rated drivers for the opening round are a 16 seed or higher. So, yeah, no chalk for me. I’ll let the model be my guide instead.

Who Should I Pick to Win My NASCAR In-Season Challenge Bracket?

Now, let’s use those ranks to fill out a bracket.

I don’t necessarily recommend playing things this way. This is just a different route to chalk, and with a drafting track and two road courses in the mix, we’ll see chaos for sure.

But here’s who would win each matchup if you were to simply pick the higher-ranked driver in my model for each matchup.

Kyle Larson’s likely to be the most popular pick to win it all, and by this method, the model would pick him as the baseline.

I wouldn’t do that for my own bracket, personally.

That’s due to some super tight matchups for Larson, especially early. In Round 1, he’s just two spots above Tyler Reddick. Neither driver is elite on drafting tracks, and Larson wrecks a ton. I’d view this as a toss-up at best.

I’d feel good about Larson at the Chicago Street Course, but he could go head-to-head with his teammate, Byron, in Sonoma. That’d be another near toss-up.

Thus, if you think most of the people you’re competing against will also go Larson, I’m good pivoting elsewhere.

Byron and Christopher Bell would be my preferred pivots. They don’t have any glaring weaknesses across the five tracks, and Bell’s path is relatively easy. I’ll be able to sleep easy before each round knowing I’ve got a bullet picked to advance.

With that said, neither Bell nor Byron has win odds above 59% in the first round, and Bell is similar to Larson where he has a super tight opening matchup. You can deviate even further than that.

If you’re looking to exploit the chaos, a handful of Fords are intriguing. Ryan Blaney will be relatively popular but is in elite form. Joey Logano, Chris Buescher, and Austin Cindric are all good on drafting tracks and can hold their own on road courses. If they can survive Chicago and Sonoma, they’ll be in a good spot for the semifinals. Blaney, Cindric, and Denny Hamlin have the highest opening-round win odds if you want to live by the “survive and advance” montra.

Cindric might be a bit too exotic of a pick for a small pool. But those Fords are the best dark horse options in the eyes of the model if you want to deviate from Larson, Byron, and Bell.

Want to see what betting markets say about the In-Season Challenge? Check out FanDuel Sportsbook's latest NASCAR betting odds to see the full menu of options.

Sign up for FanDuel Sportsbook and FanDuel Daily Fantasy today!

The above author is a FanDuel employee and is not eligible to compete in public daily fantasy contests or place sports betting wagers on FanDuel. The advice provided by the author does not necessarily represent the views of FanDuel. Taking the author's advice will not guarantee a successful outcome. You should use your own judgment when participating in daily fantasy contests or placing sports wagers.