PrizePicks selections for the Chinese Grand Prix and GEICO 400

This article is part of our NASCAR DFS series.

We’re entering a big racing weekend, with the Chinese Grand Prix F1 grand prix kicking us off at 3 am ET Sunday morning (there’s a sprint race at 11 pm ET Friday night). We then have the IndyCar Long Beach Grand Prix and NASCAR’s Geico 500 at Talladega Superspeedway set to each kick off at 3 pm ET. We’ll keep our focus for this article on the F1 and NASCAR disciplines, but race fans should be in for a fantastic weekend overall.

F1 Chinese Grand Prix

F1 will kick off the racing weekend with a return to Shanghai for the first time since 2019. It’s a sprint weekend, though it’s difficult to take much away from the sprint qualifying due to rainy conditions that forced drivers to intermediate tires in the final phases of the session. At the time of drafting this article, the props available were for qualifying of the traditional grand prix, for which we’ll include a couple of picks in the initial edition of this article. It will be updated with picks or the grand prix itself on Saturday.

Yuki Tsunoda – under 12.5 starting position

Tsunoda was left frustrated in the sprint qualifying after being knocked out in Q1. However, he’s reached Q3 in three of the four races this season and has beaten this projection in all four grand prix. The RB Honda has looked to be the sixth-fastest team for the most part, putting Tsunoda in a strong position to beat this projection.

Kevin Magnussen – over 13.5 starting position

Of the Haas driver pairing, Nico Hulkenberg has been in better form early in the season. Magnussen has started this season in the average position of 15th and he has beaten his projection only once (Jeddah). There would need to be mistakes from the likes of Tsunoda, Lance Stroll and Alex Albon, all of whom have consistently qualified ahead of Magnussen, for Magnussen to even have the opportunity to beat this prop.  

Valtteri Bottas – under 13.5 starting position

On pure pace, Bottas has proven to be plenty competent by qualifying 13th in each of the last two races. His race form is a different story due to pit woes of the Kick Sauber team. As a result, he’s a driver I want to be in on early in the weekend before fading him for the race itself.  

NASCAR Geico 500

We’ll return to a superspeedway for the first time since the first two points races of the NASCAR season. This is being billed as Ford’s best chance to put together strong results after being overshadowed by both Chevrolet and Toyota for the majority of race weekends. Talladega is a bit different than the first two superspeedways of the year, as it’s 60 feet wide (including the apron), whereas Daytona is primarily 52 feet and Atlanta spans anywhere between 40 and 52 feet. We’ll look primarily to Daytona and history at Talladega to guide us in our selections.

Due to the higher variance we see at superspeedways, the projections are notably lower across the board than on weekends at short or intermediate tracks. Let’s get to some…