After months of complacency, William Byron now may be approaching a must-win scenario as his crash at Las Vegas coupled with Denny Hamlin's win will make it a lot more difficult to make the Championship 4. He might not need to win if he doesn't crash at Talladega and one of the other playoff contenders does. Although Byron has not yet won at Talladega (unlike Daytona or Atlanta), he's probably been more consistent here as he has finished seventh or better in 7 of his last 10 starts including his last five. Although often he doesn't lead much, he's pretty consistently been one of the drivers in the hunt for the lead. He's been consistent enough that he's actually a pretty solid option for DFS play, especially since he only starts 13th. However his teammate Chase Elliott is just as consistent, starting even worse, and cheaper so you should start him instead.

Although he has seemed a lot slower this year than in previous seasons, Chris Buescher's greatest strength is that he arguably crashes less than any other driver on the NASCAR Cup Series circuit. This year, he has only crashed out of a race once, but that came in this spring's race at Talladega when a failed bump draft from Denny Hamlin sent Hamlin's teammate Christopher Bell into his fellow Chris as they battled for the lead, sending both into the inside retaining wall. That crash was pretty unavoidable, but Buescher's knack for avoiding wrecks in general is his greatest asset. However, despite that, he has surprisingly only finished in the top ten at Talladega three times and the to five only once in 2023. The RFK Racing Fords don't seem to have Team Penske's speed and since Buescher starts in the top half of the field in 14th, you probably don't want to start him.

Although Kyle Larson isn't particularly known as a drafting track master as he has yet to win any races either using the classic restrictor plates or the more recent tapered spacers, he is improving and he finished fourth and second in the last two Talladega races despite not really contending for the win. The Hendrick cars are always fast at Talladega, although Chase Elliott and William Byron usually tend to be faster. Larson led 32 laps in the first Next Gen race here in 2022 but aside from that he's never led more than eight. In an era when there aren't nearly as many crashes as there used to be, Larson will probably finish better than his 19th-place starting position, making him strongly likely to be both a top-tier DFS option and to advance to the Championship Round in the NASCAR playoffs.

Qualifying dominance on other tracks doesn't necessarily carry over to Talladega, but it did for Chase Briscoe, who qualified second to earn his 12th front row start. Although Briscoe only finished 15th in the spring, he led 20 laps and his 15-lap stint out front from laps 26-40 was the second-longest such stint in the race behind his teammate Ty Gibbs. That isn't necessarily a good thing though as in the cases of both Briscoe and Gibbs, the fact that they burnt more fuel while in the lead probably hurt their finish relative to drivers who keep passing and re-passing each other for the lead who are more likely to win. Briscoe has sometimes been awkward on drafting tracks as he won the pole for the Daytona 500 before causing the big one, being penalized, then having that penalty rescinded. Briscoe is unusually cheap, but not a good option since he'll likely finish way worse than second.