Corey Heim NASCAR enters the Anduril 250 as a DFS value play after qualifying 13th at Naval Base Coronado. That spot put him among the DraftKings NASCAR DFS salary savers for a race built on a brand new track, where lineup construction leans harder than usual on affordable drivers with road-course upside.
Heim’s profile is not built on guesswork. Since the start of 2023, he has dominated the Craftsman Truck Series on road and street courses, winning at Watkins Glen, the Charlotte ROVAL, Lime Rock Park and Mid-Ohio during that span. He also won one of two starts at COTA, giving DFS players a clear record of success to weigh against his starting spot in the Cup Series this weekend.
Shane van Gisbergen sets the bar
Shane van Gisbergen won the pole position in Saturday’s qualifying and is priced at $13,000 in DraftKings NASCAR DFS. He has won six of the last seven road and street course races, so the top of the salary scale is carrying the form of a driver who has owned this style of racing.
That leaves the middle and lower tiers of the pool carrying more lineup importance than they might on a familiar layout. On a new circuit, the gap between a premium-priced favorite and a usable salary saver can decide how much flexibility a DFS roster has elsewhere, which is why Heim’s position matters more than a simple 13th-place qualifying result would on another week.
Ryan Preece and Austin Hill
Ryan Preece offers another comparison point for road-race lineup building. In road races contested in 2025 and so far in 2026, he ranked 11th in average finishing position at 14.75, posted two top-10 finishes and held a 75% success rate. He started seventh for Sunday’s race, making him another driver DFS players can use without paying into the very top of the salary range.
Austin Hill’s weekend added more evidence that the No. 33 car had speed on track. He sat atop the leaderboard for most of Friday’s Cup Series practice session and ultimately wound up ninth, qualified tenth on Saturday and later in the evening won the O'Reilly Series race. That kind of form gives the lineup pool a wider set of cheap or midrange options, but Heim still stands out because his truck-series road-course record is the cleanest upside case in the value tier.
Corey Heim’s Cup Series step
The complication is the jump in competition. Heim’s road-course wins came in the Craftsman Truck Series, while this weekend’s race places him in the Cup Series at a new venue with less certainty built into every projection. DFS players are not buying a guarantee; they are buying a salary-saving path that has to translate across classes and a fresh track.
That makes his 13th-place starting spot more useful than flashy. It keeps him close enough to the front to matter, gives DraftKings NASCAR DFS players a lower-cost route into the Anduril 250, and forces the same choice this slate asks everywhere else: pay for the elite road-race profile at the top, or trust Heim’s record and use the savings to build around him.
