2025 NASCAR predictions: Who will win Daytona 500, championship?

The goal with this 2025 NASCAR Cup Series predictions piece is to make sure that it’s not as newsworthy in 2025 as it was in 2024. 

Enter Joey Logano. The reigning champion couldn’t help but remind everyone that last year, this piece didn’t have him in the playoffs. 

Not only did he make the playoffs, he won the whole dang thing. 

The goal isn’t to get all these picks right; that would be way too difficult to do. It’s just trying to avoid a major L.

Welp, here we go.

Daytona 500
Brad Keselowski

Keselowski is strong at these tracks and with the addition of a third RFK car and a Haas Factory Team alliance, he potentially has more drivers who will help him. But the Daytona 500 hasn’t been kind to him, as he has just one top-10 finish in his last 10 Daytona 500s and failed to finish seven of his last 10 races here. 

Why is that? 

His biggest issue could be that he has had a knack of being overly aggressive at these tracks and that likely deters others from working with him. This might seem like a lukewarm prediction. But it’s the Daytona 500, so there's a little bit of rolling the dice involved.

Regular-season champion
Kyle Larson

He was my pick last year and possibly would have won if he had not missed the 600 at Charlotte. He led the most laps (17.45 percent of the laps with 1,700 laps led, which was 555 more laps than his nearest competitor) and the most miles (14.11 percent of the miles, 363 more miles than anyone else) and there’s no reason to think he won’t this year.

Playoff participants

Twelve drivers who were in the playoffs last year will make it this year: Joey Logano (did you really think I was going to leave him out again?), Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, Alex Bowman, Chase Briscoe, William Byron, Chase